I’ll try make that a bit clearer. I bought the DVD of Help! in a charity shop yesterday and watched it that afternoon with The Light. She was astonished. She had no idea that there was such a thing as a 60s caper movie featuring The Beatles. She’s not a huge pop fan, but fully aware of the Fabs and their place in pop history but had honestly never heard of the film.
Have you ever been amazed to discover some piece of music history which everyone else thought was common knowledge, or enlightened someone else? Perhaps youve only just found out that there was a music festival in 1969 which was known as Woodstock, or had to explain to a mate that Morrissey and the singer of The Smiths are the same person?
http://i474.photobucket.com/albums/rr107/Gatz_photos/image_5.jpeg
Back in the early 90s when I actually qualified to go youth hostelling by virtue of age, I well remember having to explain to a fellow hosteller who otherwise gave every indication of being a music fan that the Paul Simon who was on the jukebox imploring us to call him Al was the very same Paul Simon of “…and Garfunkel” fame. Even more surprisingly she had their Greatest Hits on one of the then new-fangled personal CD players and had been listening to it constantly throughout her days “on the road.”
I discovered this week that Mason Williams (he of “Classical Gas”) co-wrote Cinderella Rockafella.
May not be exactly earth-shattering, but “I didn’t know that”.
In 1986, when PiLs “Rise” was doing the rounds on radio & TV, I found myself explaining to someone that John Lydon and Johnny Rotten are, in fact, the same person. You’d have thought the orange hair, the snarl and the unique singing voice, would’ve been enough to make the connection. Frustratingly, the response was: “Are you sure? I thought Sid Vicious was the singer in the Sex Pistols. Are you sure you’re not confusing them?”
Some muppet tried to convince me that the Stealers Wheel stalwart Gerry Rafferty was no longer with us.
Checked google…….who knew?
Interesting to learn on the Misters and Missuses thread that:
Mary Hopkin was married to Tony Visconti.
And that there was a Mrs Bert Jansch, who was a singer-songwriter, died soon after him and is buried next to him.
She provided BV’s to Sound & Vision too if I recall right.
With Help! on my mind I read that as ‘Mary Hopkin was married to Victor Spinetti’.
The Help! thing was the first thing I knew about the Beatles. It wasn’t until it was shown the night that some rotten sod shot John Lennon that I realised that it was connected with other things I knew about like Band on the Run (which I’d been grooving on for years), that Yellow Submarine song and Scouse the Mouse.
I still can’t hold in my head the idea that the John Lennon in Help! and that bearded bloke in the bed four years later are the same person.
The Help! film I meant. Though it is also a thing. Like, er, everything.
Not popular culture related but thanks to Radcliffe & Maconie we now know there are two push-in tabs on either end of a box of foil that keep the roll in the box and make it really easy to dispense the foil.
It has changed our lives!
The wife and I saw The Bootleg Beatles the other week (fab as always). After the gig she astonished me by saying not only had she never heard Rain before but also had never heard All together now and Across the Universe!? I considered this to be quite an enviable position to have the pleasure of hearing Beatles songs as ‘new’.
I know more than one Beatles ‘fan’ who has never heard of Rain.
One of the fab four’s best tunes in my opinion.
A few weeks ago we had a family gathering which ended up with the guitars coming out. My sister in law asked me to accompany her in singing Nowhere Man. My son who is 33 told me in all seriosity that he had never heard that song before
I blame the parents
By the way, how come the Help DVD is £22 to buy on that tax dodging site ? Are we expecting it be reissued ?
Ps.. The Missus may not have heard of Across the universe but she does at least know that the lads are not spelling out Help on the album cover.
So it is. £1.50 if you look in the right chazza shops in Billericay.
There were people inside The Wombles!!!!
Jesus, you saw that DVD too?
Ughh, my eyes…
A few days ago I was reading Adam Ant’s book and he claims that he got a 3am phone call in 1981 from Michael Jackson asking where he can get hold of a jacket like his pirate one. Details were exchanged and some months later Jacko’s image was transformed with the jacket in question very much at the fore.
I mentioned Adam Ant at work because I sometimes mention Shakin’ Stevens when gravitas or a pithy quote is needed at internal meetings. On this occasion, it was important for the context of the meeting to use the quote “ridicule is nothing to be scared of”. A young colleague at the meeting guessed that this was a Shaky quote but no! It’s Adam Ant! He refused to believe that there was a pop star called that.
Later on, I got pics of AA up on Google images to show him that I wasn’t making it up. Knowing that Shaky owes Elvis his professional life, he said “So he was a Michael Jackson tribute act, then!”
I suppose you could say he was adamant in his disbelief
Still, there’s worse people to be less famous than than MJ.
Adam’s commercial heyday: 1980 – 84, limited impact outside the U.K.
Jacko’s commercial heyday: 1970 – 94, biggest star in the world, best selling album ever, this week passed 30 million sales just within the U.S.
By way of balance I would say I thought Adam’s most recent album was pretty damned good and Thriller, which came out About the same time as Goody Two Shoes (whose lyrics maybe even fit the DSTYGEHM better) was probably Jackson’s last top hole offering….
It’s late and I don’t know what the acronym DSTYGEHM stands for…
…although having just hit the Submit button, I’ve now worked it out.
Ho hum.
I already knew that legendary Stackridge were the first band onstage at the very first Glastonbury festival. I discovered on Saturday night that this was the first song they performed. It is also my favourite song by the band and one I want to be played at my funeral in 50 years time. You are stuck with me until then.
A friend of mine at Uni was a Fleetwood Mac fan, but was adamant that Stevie Nicks was a male guitarist with curly hair and Lindsay Buckingham a sexy blonde female vocalist …
Just found out that Paul Jeffreys, bassist with Cockney Rebel, was killed 27 years ago today in the Lockerbie disaster.
Until 2 minutes ago, I didn’t know that tonic water was originally taken as an anti-malarial medication with higher doses of quinine in it. (I suspect everyone else knew that…)
Courtesy of the BBC website, Roy Wood had to re record I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day in 1981 because the master tapes were lost.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-25402438
I recently found out that South Africans call traffic lights “robots”.
I thought it was the other way round.
I can assure you that robots do not call traffic lights South Africans – although I gather when Kenyan kids try to “colour them in” it can make Zebras cross.
(Wild, guv’nor? I was livid! ©NTNOCN)