Baby You're a Rich Man

Baby, You're a Rich Man
I read somewhere, it could have been in the Ray Coleman book "Lennon" that John had a version in which he sang about Brian Epstein and he said "baby you're a rich fag Jew." The song was about Brian Epstein and the refererence to "you keep all your money in a big brown bag" was a reference to how Brian would accept money from concert promoters in brown paper bags to avoid paying taxes, so it was this loose, undeclared cash. The Beatles had a nasty time in Manila and Brian and Mal Evans somehow forgot to take the brown paper bags into the plane with them or they were confiscated at the airport. They had been told to perform for Imelda Marcos for a royal performance and it was their day off and they never did that performance and got roughed up at the airport.
Brian was depressed after the touring stopped. The Beatles wanted to concentrate on songwriting and were using film and videotape to promote their hit records rather than through personal appearances. Brian hadn't foreseen this and thought of the records as a novelty to promote the touring rather than the other way around that the touring was done to market the records.
Ray Coleman implied that John's comments on the unreleased version of this song hurt Brian. But that would be far too simplistic.
Brian was a very complicated person but that was what John Lennon liked about him. John had often frequented the transvestite bars in Hamburg. He didn't care for the other managers that they had. Brian was just obsessed with the Beatles. They meant everything to Brian. If you know of people who are Beatlemaniacs and find themselves just lost in the hysteria of what they were at that time, Brian was one of those people and he was their manager.
Brian had to keep his homosexuality in the closet. He literally had to hide his love away. He would have trysts with boys here and there. The more famous he became, the more he was used and exploited. He enjoyed being roughed up and then to make matters worse, he would be swindled by his partners who threatened to report him to the press unless they were paid. That was his sex life. He never had a boyfriend. The only man that ever loved him as a person was John Lennon and he was married and a straight man who was just bi curious.
I think if the Beatles were a working band today, a guy like Brian could have had a life out in the open being gay and all of that. But then it wouldn't be the Beatles then, would it.
The fact that back then, being gay was illegal gave Brian an appeal to John Lennon.
John was always ironic, puns, so whatever he wrote should not be taken literally. John hated the beautiful people. He hated them and thought the beautiful people were boring and square. John like Brian because he was like the drag queens in Hamburg and he had this side of him that he liked getting roughed up and he had gambling addictions and so forth. So you can picture John nudging Brian as if to say "how does it feel to be one of them, eh?" and that's with the assumption that he wasn't one of them.

Eat, Pray, Beatles

Having seen the Julia Robert's movie "Eat, Pray, Love," I could not help but think of the Beatles meditating in India under the direction of the Maharishi. They had been into drugs and now they were getting into Eastern Philosophy. Whether they were trend setters or merely followers, the Beatles were always hip what was happening at the time. The sixties were a time to find oneself and to find God. He wasn't found on any of the LSD trips that they took but the idea of trying to find him was there. Who is God? Is there some supernatural force that is greater than what we have on Earth? John had mocked Western organized religions by stating that "the Beatles are bigger than Jesus" and predicted that Christianity would fade away. Receiving death threats from the Ku Klux Klan didn't deter him to apologize for what he had said. He did offer an explanation. He was not "knocking Jesus as a person or God as a thing." It was more of an explanation of what he had said rather than an apology for what he had said. Now, the man who had mocked Jesus was asking an Indian guru for the answer.

Sour Milk Sea

Has any of you ever heard of the song "Sour Milk Seas"?
George Harrison wrote it in 1968. He had signed Jackie Lomax on to Apple Records at the time and I think he wrote the song "Sour Milk Sea" for him. George recorded it from the Esher demo tapes recorded at George's house in the Spring of 1968 and it is included along with many of the tracks that were later re-recorded and finalized at EMI for the Beatles White Album. It is not one of George's best recorded pieces and I have never heard Jackie Lomax's version of the song. George's voice sounds thin on the high notes. Not one of his best for his vocal range. "Not Guilty" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" were better for George's vocal range.
The Beatles recorded a version of the song, or should I say, George Harrison recorded a version of the song at his house with the Beatles backing him up on the recording. It was used as a demo recording for Jackie Lomax and was never officially released on a Beatles album. Come to think of it, it never made it on the Anthology CDs either.
Source(s):
The Beatles Unsurpassed Demos .Yellow Dog Records.
The Beatles Unplugged. Alternative Edge Productions.
Jackie Lomax
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT7HMdUEBI4
George Harrison's demo recoring with the Beatles at his home in Esher
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHVa4MEjkFM

If John Lennon was alive today, how would he feel about what's happening currently?

Nationalized Health Care. The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The economy. Gay marriage. Sex abuse among the clergy. And many other issues. John Lennon was the outspoken and controversial Beatle. He was the Beatle who said "the Beatles are bigger than Jesus Christ." He was considered one of the most dangerous men in America according to the FBI who wanted him deported. His marriage to Japanese conceptual artist Yoko Ono was hated by many Beatle fans who associated her relationship with John as the reason the Beatles broke up. John was criticized for mocking Jesus in his song "The Ballad of John and Yoko" and for his no religion comments in his song "Imagine."
He was not the only songwriter who spoke out about the issues of his time. But because John Lennon said it, more people were affected positively or negatively by his comments in interviews and in his songs.
In Revolution, John spoke about the student protests. "You say you've got a real solution, well you know. we'd all love to see the plan." What would John think of the thousands of pages of Obama's Nationalized Health Care Reform plan?
And in Imagine, John's comments are still too controversial to understand. Imagine no countries, no religion, no possessions. Back then it was the War in Vietnam. Today it's the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Different places but essentially the same line of reasoning. Defending our country in someone else's country, American soldiers killed, wounded for complex reasons rather than basic reasons. "Imagine there's no countries... no need to kill or die for... a brotherhood of man." We still don't get it. Could it ever be possible? No religion, no countries, one world economy and peace and solving real problems rather than manufactured problems?
In one of his last albums John in Double Fantasy seemed content to "Watch the Wheels" go around. He was done with trying to speak out about the issues. But he did say a comment in Playboy magazine that struck a chord with me even to this day.
"Don't expect Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself. "
Well said. Rest in peace John.

Revolution

I was in Naples, Florida a few weeks ago. I was in an Irish pub, McCabe's and they had a singer/guitarist there. The audience requested a few Beatles songs but the musician wouldn't play most of the requests. Finally he settled on "Revolution." That was a great song, Revolution. John had been involved with Yoko Ono and he was really starting to come out as far as speaking his mind about politics. John had been chiding the late Beatle manager Brian Epstein about speaking out against the Vietnam War during their last tour. Brian told them not to comment on it. John was in enough trouble about his Jesus comments. "The Beatles are bigger than Jesus now." And then he said "Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary." The Ku Klux Klan sent the Beatles a death threat to their hotel. At a concert down South, Memphis I believe, John and George winced when a boy lit off a pack of firecrackers at a Beatle concert. They looked at each other to see if one of them had been shot. George said "America was mad. It had only been a few years since Kennedy was killed." Revolution was recorded in several forms. At George's home in Esher, a demo was recorded with John singing double tracked and playing on an acoustic guitar. George had a four track recorder so a few overdubs were done. For the most part, this first version of Revolution had a very homey feel to it like the Beatles were jamming in your living room. So cool. Later on the White Album "Revolution 1" was recorded. It first it was much longer. Yoko was reading a passage. John added in sound effects that he later transferred over on to "Revolution 9." He can be heard vomiting, having orgasms, doing primal screams, and all such audio avante garde influenced by Yoko Ono and her conceptual performance art. This extended version of Revolution was hated by the other Beatles. Paul was doing multiple takes of "Obla Di, Obla Da" as well as writing songs and producing demos for Mary Hopkin and a group he reformed called Badfinger. For Mary Hopkin, Paul produced a demo called "Goodbye." For Badfinger he produced "Come and Get It." The song writing credits were to Lennon and McCartney but Paul wrote and produced the songs for his new found talent.
John was not sure how he wanted go with the intention of his Revolution. He sang "don't you know that you can count me out-in!" He didn't know if he was for or against a Revolution. He was very much involved with Yoko at the time. He came back from India disillusioned from the Maharishi. He suspected the Indian guru of trying to seduce some women in the Beatles entourage. But if the truth be told, he was using that rumor as an excuse to get back to London to be with Yoko and take drugs. He had been experimenting with LSD and he missed the trips. Yoko was taking heroine and soon John would be showing up at Beatles recording sessions in a lethargic state. Paul would try in desperation to rally the Beatles to do the next take of Obladi Oblada and John would simply smile at him and laugh and as soon as he had the chance would go off with Yoko. Yoko would follow John into the bathroom. She never left him alone. She was sick and put a bed in the recording studio. The other Beatles were livid. Before Yoko, the Beatle wives and girlfriends were never allowed in the recording studio. Now here was Yoko, not only present in the studio, but sleeping in the studio and making critical comments. "Beatles do this. Paul play piano like this." Paul was shocked. Here was John's bird telling him how to play music.
Later on, when Paul recorded "Hey Jude" as a new Beatles single. John decided to re-record "Revolution" on the other side of the single making the disc a Double A single. Two hits on one disc. Paul's Hey Jude on one side. John's Revolution on the other side. He brought in Nicky Hopkins to play piano. Special care was taken to produce the lead guitar that was recorded directly into the mixing board. John overloaded the circuits and created a distinctive distortion sound. The opening machine gun sounding guitar riff is his signature. John Lennon was breaking the studio rules again. Many of the recording artists of that late 1960s time period were producing loud distorted guitar sounds. Eric Clapton. Jimi Hendrix. Now John was adding his own sound. He would produce a similar sound with "Cold Turkey" as a solo artist with Yoko and then aided by Eric Clapton, a friend of John and George. But here in "Revolution" the sound is John's sound. It is the machine gun of a Revolution, loud and violently abrasive. It was the perfect backdrop of student anti-war protests, LSD trips, hippies sleeping in city parks, people like John and Yoko living in sin and without a care in the world. The straight world was in shock. Who was this long haired freak wearing women's glasses sleeping with a Japanese woman? It was John Lennon. He was crazy and every kid loved him and every kid's parent hated him. He didn't need to say that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. Soon a man named Charles Manson would be telling his followers to listen to the Beatles albums and listen to Revolution. And Charlie Manson and his followers thought he was Jesus.

Try to See it My Way

In 1966, John Lennon was at odds with his manager Brian Epstein. He thought that maybe that tryst in Spain may have given him some leverage in the group. Alas, Brian remained in control and actually favored Paul although he was continuously growing unnerved by Paul's assertive behavior regarding the group.
The Vietnam War was in full swing. Action '65 had taken it's toll the world was soon growing discontent with America's involvement in Vietnam and was questioning why the US troops were there, what exactly they were defending in an independent nation thousands of miles away and why women and children, even infants where being shot and killed in villages for little or no reason. The Mi Li Incident left little doubt that the US involvement in Vietnam had little to do with keeping South East Asia safe for democracy.
There was also an incident in which the Beatles were in conflict with their American distributor, Capitol Records that would literally butcher their master recordings and splice one track on to one album and one track on to another. Tracks from Help, Rubber Soul, and as yet unreleased tracks from Revolver where hastily butchered from their sources and Capitol created its own Beatles album called Yesterday and Today to capitalize on the chart success of Paul's hit single "Yesterday."
In any event, whether it was in protest of the baby killing done by American troops in Vietnam, or the resentment of the Beatles against Capitol Records for butchering their recordings by creating it's own albums to market in the US, the Beatles chose to use a photo of themselves in butcher clothing with dismembered dolls and scraps of meat and bloody clothing.
As President Johnson talked about the Domino Theory and how important it was to maintain democracy in Southeast Asia, the Beatles lyrics ran against the status quo of the establishment.
"Try to see it my way. Life is very short for fussing and fighting, my friend."
As George Harrison later reflected "it had just been a few years since Kennedy was killed. America was mad."
In less than five years, another Kennedy would be killed, along with Martin Luther King. The Butcher Sleeve as banned but the Beatles had come out with a statement. Brian was furious and it was only the beginning of John Lennon's comments that would soon cause a great deal of stress for John Lennon, Brian Epstein and the entire Beatles entourage.
John said that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus Christ. He went on to say that Christianity would fade, that Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary.
Shortly before a concert in the American Bible Belt, the Beatles had received a death threat from the Ku Klux Klan. A fan set off firecrackers at a concert, and John and George looked at each other to see if either one of them had been shot. In 1980, John Lennon would be shot and killed by a crazy fan.

The Winter of Our Discontent

That was what George Harrison said about the Get Back and Let It Be recording sessions and film. He had been working with Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton on various projects after completing the Beatles White Album and before the start of Get Back. George Harrison, outside of the Beatles inner sanctum, was being regarded as a musical celebrity, adorned and adored by the rock music community and the youth culture. But back in the Beatles group, he was simply George, the youngest member of the band and the lowest member on the pecking order. Despite his phenomenal talent as a guitarist, Paul would tell him how to play guitar on his songs and berate him.
"Whatever it is that would please you," George said to Paul when he asked him to play his guitar differently on one of Paul's songs for Get Back.
Later on, John Lennon said that he liked the fact that Get Back was showing the Beatles as they really were at that time with "warts and all." Yet, it was Lennon who called in the aid of famed pop music producer Phil Spector to liven up the Get Back recordings and repackage them as Let It Be with strings, an orchestra, and a choir.