MARK LEWISOHN & THE TAPE: Apple Suppresses His Use of It | #021

today I'm pop-goes the 60s we're going to talk about the revelatory tape from September of 1969 of the Beatles meeting where they discuss the follow-up album to Abbey Road we're to talk about what's on the tape could listen to a little portion of the tape today and you're gonna find out why Apple prevented Mark Lewisohn from using it in his horns erode show here on pop close the 60s [Music] back in September 11th of 2019 Richard Williams of the Guardian wrote a provocative article on the Beatles titled this tape rewrites everything we knew about the Beatles somewhat grandiose because it doesn't rewrite everything we know but what it does rewrite is that the Beatles were possibly going to record an album after Abbey Road so the reason Richard Williams was doing this story in the first place is because he was covering mark Lewis ins horns e road tour which is a 50th anniversary of Abbey Road and on the eve of the tour mark got some bad news I was given about four and a half nearly five minutes of this meeting tape it actually runs about 50 minutes apparently and I'm as you can imagine desperate to hear the rest of it and I hope that by the time I get to write about it which will be Volume three I will have heard it all by then so far I've only heard a bit that circulates amongst a small group of people I'm not the only one who's got it and I certainly don't own it but I have a recording of it so I have this tape and I was intent on playing bits of it in my touring show horns erode because it's it's so fascinating in terms of the content what they actually saying to each other in this meeting and I played it to the journalist Richard Williams the ex Melody Maker journalist now writes for The Guardian who came to my house to do an interview with me to promote the tour or the list - mmm highlight the fact that the tool would be happening and I played it to him and I actually hadn't realised it at the time being somewhat naive I suppose but as as the journalist he obviously realized that's the focus of his piece and that being this being the 21st century just flew around the world in in about five minutes courtesy of the internet and suddenly everyone's talking about it and that brought me and that tape to the attention of Apple and on the very eve of the opening date of the tour I heard from Apple with a very strong suggestion that I do not play it and I took advice and I realized I had to row back a bit because I didn't want that I wanted the tour to go ahead I didn't want it to be stopped and people had bought tickets by this point and you know I took the pragmatic view so marked legal advice said that he could play a small part of it or they was greed upon that he only played a probably about 45 seconds of it and then he couldn't do any other quotes of the rest of the tape and he could only paraphrase Richard Williams in The Guardian called it the eighth in error and that's how it's gone around now I see 8th but it was the ninth it was 9 969 and it was a Savile Row and bring go was in hospital with just under observation for problem with his intestines he wasn't kept him for long he's forgotten about their hospitalization because when he did an interview with the BBC recently he said I was in hospital in 69 I think so but it was and in fact there's an account of John and Yoko visiting him in hospital John records this for Ringo that means you know because he couldn't be there and that tape is around and I've got four and a half minutes on yeah we think it's fifty something minutes yes yes yes I believe so and it's been quoted at length in the anthony fauci book if you want to know most about that tape find that book and it's in one or two other places as well but really that is the primary knowledge of it that that book I was accused by certain people of coming up with a tape that they didn't know existed and mentioning it to a newspaper without them even knowing anything about it and my response was but it's been quoted at length in and in a lennon endorsed book because one day at a time banned any force it was endorsed by John and Yoko it was done with their blessing and I couldn't know that they didn't know that and it reminded a lot of people about that book and there's several pages of it there several pages and so yeah so the the thing about 14 tracks is that the beat was always had 14 in their mind I realized this a few years ago that when they're making it out whenever they made an album if they had done say 10 tracks they would always say oh we've got four to go so when he's saying how we divided up is 4 + 4 + 4 + 2 for Ringo if he wants them which is fine so would have taken up heaven you know I guess so yes but they're not shortchanging Ringo because obviously he's barely writing but even still they're giving him two if he wants them which is great and I did read somebody say what a disastrous idea that would have been but why would it if it was Astra C it would not have been disastrous it would have been for great Lennon zones for great McCartney songs and for great Harrison zones I'm gonna play a snippet of that tape in a moment but mark was referencing the Anthony Fawcett book one day at a time which is this book and Anthony fossil was John Lennon's personal assistant during this time and when he wrote this book I'm convinced he had the actual full tape because when he he writes about that meeting he's quoting the tape of her batum I mean he couldn't have been told what happened and then wrote it he had to have heard the tape so that the tape is I would almost say it's transcribed for us in this book now there's another youtuber that I really like named John Heaton and he goes into and reads many of the passages from that chapter on his channel I'll put the link below but let's saw listen to what John had to say to be given to people who like music like that I met whether it is that leads to something funny then every time we need anything of a latina Cortazar single after now we could just do only stuff that we you really took there's a man he was doing what song album and nobody told including the guy wrote it just because it was going to be popular like because the LP does not to be popular that way that little part of the tape John is talking about Maxwell's silver hammer and some of the difficulty the ban had recording some of these songs so mark had a little background on that discussion here's what mark says the prelude to what John said it must have been a couple of days earlier because he's John is referencing something that Paul had told to him a couple of days earlier that he didn't rape Maxwell's silver hammer or obliterated are very highly either and John has obviously been thinking about this for a couple of days yeah we we hated those tracks we really really didn't enjoy the experience even though John wasn't on Maxwell yeah he knew that George and Ringo had hated it so on their behalf he's saying we really didn't enjoy what you put us through on those two songs and now for you to say you didn't really rate them very highly either so why the hell did we do that why did you make us do that why did you put us through something that even you weren't that passionate about and Paul must have said it was B to make the album popular because there would be popular songs Amin oblate the opener da has this reputation now that we know about but in reality is a great song and it was a number-one single for the marmalade and it was it's in the pickles canon of great songs but evidently Paul had kind of put it planted it in those albums because he knew it would be a kind of popular number and Johnny st. amalgams don't have to be that why didn't we just do it as a single or why didn't you give it to Mary or someone who needs a song like that why did you make us do it if you didn't even really rate it yourself it's revelatory to hit her and it's also revelatory to hear the even-tempered way that john says this to Moody's not shouting he's not even angry he's just perplexed is that you made us do this thing and you didn't really believe in it so let's analyze this a bit when John throws out the idea of equal songs for the three writers and then Ringo with a couple extras if he wants them obviously that sounds pretty reasonable to me but what happens it seems like it's Paul right away said well I didn't think George's songs were that good until now now I guess if he said it this way something like well now I think Georgia songs are really good then George wouldn't have replied the way he did so as it turns out nobody agreed to this formula which to me is a little bit strange because George Harrison was going to say no no four songs is too many one or tool do me just fine that would that's probably what he always wanted but what's interesting in an interview just several months later in 1970 he said this about it you know it was just difficult to get in and I wasn't gonna you know push and shout but he was just over the last year or so we'd worked something out which is still a joke really three songs from a three songs for Paul's three songs for John and two for Ringo but that is the main problem you see because I mean ring I only get two well cuz that's fair isn't it that's what you called Burke so George really had the most to gain by having equal amount of songs and as he said it's it's a joke I mean is it a joke I mean isn't that what he wanted so I don't really understand you know just months later he's making light of this suggestion when really he's always stated that he wanted equal time anyway so that it's he's I don't understand why he's taking that approach it doesn't it's contradictory to what he wanted in other interviews and what he had said so I guess no progress came from that meeting from 1969 and I wonder if Ringo even ever heard the tape because just four weeks later John Lennon quit the band so it seems to me that had that meeting gone differently with the new album formula proposed if Paul would've said yeah that's a great idea George yeah give you four Slice you totally deserve it let's do this they probably would we probably would've had another Beatle album so in retrospect this tape destroys the myth of the Beatles knowing that Abbey Road was going to be their last album so thankfully we that myth has destroyed hopefully we'll get to hear this whole tape someday and Mark Lewisohn is hopefully gonna write about it but I hope we get to hear it someday so one of my next videos I'm gonna talk about what this album after Abbey Road woulda sounded like and looked like so if you want to stay tuned and want to know when that video is coming out just hit the notification bell give me a like and give me a comment because the YouTube algorithm really likes it and it's free see you next time on pop goes the 60s [Music]

Channel: Pop Goes the 60s

Views: 63,035

Keywords: Pop Goes the 60s, Matt Williamson, Mark Lewisohn interview, Beatles Tape September 1969, Beatles Album after Abbey Road, John Lennon's Tape, Albums That Never Were, Mark Lewisohn Greg Armstrong, Mark Lewisohn Chris Shaw, George Harrison The Smith Tapes, John Heaton lost Beatles Tape Sept 1969, Beatles lost interview tape, Anthony Fawcett Lennon, Anthony Fawcett One Day At A Time Lennon, Paul McCartney On George's Songs, Hornsey Road, Guardian Richard Williams Beatles, vol 2

Id: zEJrQmqrrlY

Length: 11min 58sec (718 seconds)

Published: Wed May 20 2020