Rarities | solobeatles

John and Paul Reunion 1974

July 4, 2016 · by solobeatles

In 1974 Lennon produced Harry Nilsson’s album Pussy Cats in Los Angeles. With Nilsson’s gift for gorgeous melodies and his peerless voice, there was speculation that he could be a new McCartney for Lennon; probably Nilsson hoped so himself.

But McCartney had been a fan of Nilsson’s for years, as well, so he and Linda dropped by the Pussy Cats sessions at Burbank Studios the same night Stevie Wonder was there. Wonder was currently in the midst of a streak of chart-topping classics following his 1972 tour with the Rolling Stones.

One could have heard a pin drop when McCartney walked in, as the Beatles’ break up had been famously acrimonious. Finally, Lennon said, “Valiant Paul McCartney, I presume?”

McCartney replied, “Sir Jasper Lennon, I presume?” referring to the roles they performed in a 1963 Christmas stage show. They shook hands and soon started jamming.

Lennon sang lead and played guitar, McCartney drummed and sang harmony, Wonder sang and played electric piano, Linda played the organ, Lennon’s girlfriend May Pang the tambourine, Nilsson sang, Jesse Ed Davis played guitar, producer Ed Freeman played bass and Bobby Keys played sax. They jammed some blues, then covered “Lucille,” “Sleep Walk,” “Stand By Me,” “Cupid,” “Chain Gang” and “Take This Hammer.”

It should have been a classic moment, but it was past midnight and everyone was coked out. On the famous bootleg, A Toot and a Snore, Lennon says to Wonder, “You wanna snort, Steve? A toot? It’s goin’ round.” A couple tunes later Lennon is looking for some more coke while repeatedly complaining about the technical difficulties he’s having with his mike and headphones.

On one hand it’s sad that the last known recording of McCartney and Lennon should be so lackluster. But on the other hand, it’s nice to hear that they were friendly again. The “Lucille” cover is almost passable, on par with some of the more coherent “Get Back” outtakes.

Lennon’s Only Non-Album B-Side: “Move Over Ms. L”

April 18, 2015 · by solobeatles

I didn’t cover this song in my book but here’s an article on it from the fantastic website www.beatlesbible.com:

The b-side to John Lennon’s Stand By Me single was first recorded during the sessions for the Walls And Bridges album.

Move Over Ms L was originally intended to appear on Walls And Bridges, but was left off at the last minute. It had been positioned between Surprise Surprise (Sweet Bird Of Paradox and What You Got on the album’s second side, but Lennon decided to remove it just before the pressing was due to begin, fewer than three weeks before its release.

Move Over Ms L was later re-recorded, and subsequently became the only non-album b-side of Lennon’s career, and was issued with the Stand By Me single, taken from the Rock ‘N’ Roll album, in early 1975.

The song vaguely poked fun at Lennon’s estranged wife Yoko Ono, although the playful lyrics were clearly not intended to hurt the woman who once referred to herself in song as Mrs Lennon.

Now to err is something human and forgiving so divine
I’ll forgive your trespasses if you forgive me mine
Life’s a deal, you knew it when you signed the dotted line
They nail you to the paper, put a rope around your neck
And so we sing along, the boy stood on the burning deck

Lennon recorded a home demo of Move Over Ms L prior to recording Walls And Bridges. He performed the song on an electric guitar, playing a boogie riff and singing the chorus in falsetto while his girlfriend May Pang made a phone call in the background.

A second demo was taped around a month later, in June 1974. A more serious attempt than the first, this was performed on an acoustic guitar. Lennon whispered the lyrics in an apparent attempt to not wake up Pang, and featured a quick improvised impression of Ono.

Lennon finally brought the song to the studio during the Walls And Bridges sessions. It was recorded in just three takes on 15 July 1974; one of the attempts was released on the 1998 box set John Lennon Anthology. This was more country and western in its feel, with a slide guitar solo by Jesse Ed Davis, but evidently failed to capture the sound Lennon was after.

The song was then given to Keith Moon, one of Lennon’s drinking buddies during the Lost Weekend. Moon recorded the song for his album Two Sides Of The Moon, and was released in April 1975. It was also the b-side of his single Solid Gold.

Lennon re-recorded Move Over Ms L in October 1974, and it became the only original composition of the Rock ‘N’ Roll sessions. This time Lennon was satisfied with the recording, and it was duly issued with the Stand By Me single.

Written by: Lennon
Recorded: 15 July 1974; 21-25 October 1974
Producer: John Lennon

Released: 18 April 1975 (UK), 10 March 1975 (US)

John Lennon: vocals, electric guitar
Jesse Ed Davis: electric guitar
Eddie Mottau: acoustic guitar
Klaus Voormann: bass guitar
Ken Ascher: piano
Bobby Keys, Steve Madaio, Howard Johnson, Ron Aprea, Frank Vicari: horns
Jim Keltner: drums
Arthur Jenkins: percussion

Available on:
John Lennon Signature Box
John Lennon Anthology

The McCartney/Costello Demos

March 27, 2015 · by solobeatles

The mid-‘80s saw a dip in McCartney’s career after the triumph of his 1982 album Tug of War. Pipes of Peace (1983) received lukewarm critical response, his feature Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984) was a box office flop, and Press (1986) saw a significant drop in sales compared to his earlier releases. McCartney decided an overhaul was in order and reached out to Elvis Costello (born Declan MacManus).

Costello originally rose to fame as a member of the late ‘70s punk/New Wave movement due to his angry intellectual persona, but the sophistication of his snarky wordplay and torch song melodies made him a genre all to himself. Also, like McCartney he had a musician father, a Liverpudlian mother — and he had joined the Beatles fan club at age 11.

On George Harrison’s recent comeback album Cloud Nine (1987), producer Jeff Lynne cajoled him to get back in touch with the Beatle qualities he had suppressed in order to prove he could make it on his own. On Flowers in the Dirt, Costello did the same for McCartney, first by encouraging him to get his Hofner violin bass out of mothballs. Deciding the past was now far enough away, McCartney did so and from then on played it regularly.

McCartney relished working with Costello, whose cynical persona was reminiscent of Lennon’s. However, when Costello started answering back in song, as Lennon did in “Getting Better,” McCartney initially balked, fearing they were setting themselves up for too close a comparison. Still, he eventually relaxed, and Costello joined the tradition of singing partners with whom McCartney competes for a girl in a song. Lennon did so in “You’re Gonna Lose That Girl,” Michael Jackson in “The Girl Is Mine,” and Costello in “You Want Her Too.”

In 1987 and 1988, McCartney and Costello recorded an album’s worth of acoustic demos. Twelve were eventually re-recorded for various albums or b-sides, but to many hardcore fans the demos are actually superior to the slickly produced official versions. The high-pitched harmonies of the “My Brave Face” demo have the strength and purity of the Fabs in 1963.

The “Don’t Be Careless Love” demo recalls the heyday of British duos like Chad and Jeremy and Peter and Gordon, but on Flowers in the Dirt, McCartney dropped Costello’s voice in the mix and swathed it with ‘80s production gauze.

He did the same for “That Day Is Done,” but at the Concert for Linda’s Memorial in 1999, Costello knocked it out of the park accompanied just by piano.

Hopefully, Macca and Costello will officially release the original demos one day soon.

Probably their finest collaboration was “Veronica,” which appeared on Costello’s 1989 album Spike. A shimmering up-tempo number, paradoxically it was about Costello’s grandmother who suffered from Alzheimer’s. (“The Day is Done” was about her death.) It was Costello’s biggest hit in the US, making it to No. 19 on Billboard and No. 1 on the Modern Rock chart.

Of the twelve McCartney-Costello songs that have so far seen official release, the only ones on which the two sing together are “My Brave Face,” “You Want Her Too,” and “Veronica.” The others include: the fine “Back on My Feet,” b-side to McCartney’s “Once Upon a Long Ago” (on bonus reissues of Flowers in the Dirt), “Don’t Be Careless Love” and “That Day Is Done” on Flowers in the Dirt, “Mistress and Maid” and “The Lovers That Never Were” on McCartney’s Off the Ground (1993), “Pads, Paws, and Claws” on Costello’s Spike (1989), “So Like Candy” and “Playboy to a Man” on Costello’s Mighty Like a Rose (1991), and “Shallow Grave” on Costello’s All This Useless Beauty (1996).

The Last Unfinished Beatle Song

March 26, 2012 · by solobeatles

In the early ‘90s, Harrison and Apple Records manager Neil Aspinall asked Yoko Ono if she had any unreleased Lennon demos the other Beatles could use as the basis for possible new Beatle songs. When McCartney came to New York to induct Lennon into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, Ono gave him two cassette tapes that featured demos of “Free as a Bird,” “Real Love,” “Now and Then,” and “Grow Old With Me.”

The reunited Beatles did not gravitate towards “Grow Old With Me,” perhaps because it was strongly linked to Ono, and had already been prominently released on 1984’s Milk and Honey. The group tackled “Free as a Bird,” then “Real Love,” and McCartney was keen to tackle the final and most incomplete of all the Lennon demos, “Now and Then.” However, Harrison didn’t like that one. He and McCartney tried to write a song together called “All for Love” in the spring of 1995, but the session ended in fierce argument. “It’s just like being back in the Beatles,” Harrison cracked dourly, and the threesome never recorded together again.

McCartney loved harmonizing with Lennon on “Now and Then,” and has since expressed a desire to do a version with Starr. While he has never formally attempted to do a version himself, he may have also borrowed a moment of drama from Lennon’s performance for the final song of his 2005 album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, “Anyway.” The pregnant pause of “Anyway” at 1:40 sounds vaguely reminiscent of the haunting piano passage Lennon plays 4:30 into “Now and Then” …

Yes? No? Not buying it? Well, anyway, when arranging “Anyway,” McCartney pretended he was a Southern Randy Newman, with a little Curtis Mayfield thrown in. From the earliest days McCartney would imagine himself to be the artists he loved when writing a new song, like when he pretended to be Ray Charles and Little Richard while composing “She’s a Woman” on the way in to Abbey Road Studios. Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich gave McCartney a pure, classy piano sound, then upped the emotion even further at the bridge with the addition of the Millenia Ensemble strings, a Moog synth, and harmonium mixed just right.