Tag Archive for "paul mccartney" tag

Well, the last post, although clearly entitled Songs about girls, featured a song about a car and included reference to a well-known tune very much about a boy. The next song was actually written for a boy – for Julian Lennon. I’m sure you know it and will sing along at the end, possibly with an arm waving and maybe a lighter gently flickering somewhere above your head. Careful.

It was being recorded on this day in 1968 at Abbey Road.

I won’t apologise for choosing two Paul McCartney songs in as many posts. I just won’t.

If you haven’t yet gamely played along with the last random topic, as there are just so many songs about girls, there might as well be another post in a week or so which should hopefully mop up all those ladies momentarily forgotten about. If you think of any in the meantime, do jot them down.

That’s about it for another week. As promised, in the interests of fairness, I leave you with ten chaps to identify from the lyrics below. Can you name them all, and can you similarly give a tired brain something to reach for?

01. “We miss you day and night
You left town to live by the rifle
You left us to fight”

02. “In the stone, under the dust
His name is still engraved
Some things need to go away”

03. “He goes out
He don’t have no doubt
He don’t have to know
What the world’s about”

04. “My brother, you are older than me
Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won’t heal?
Your eyes have died, but you see more than I”

05. “Never used your head
To find out what this whole thing meant
It’s not what it seems
But it is”

06. “You’ve really made the grade
And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear
Now it’s time to leave the capsule, if you dare”

07. “We’ve got to get on with the film show
Hollywood waits at the end of the rainbow
Who cares what it’s about as long as the kids go?”

08. “I got a cupboard full of fleshy, fresh ingredients
I’m very careful, at the same time, quite expedient”

09. “A smile like the cartoon, tooth for a tooth
You said that irony was the shackles of youth”

10. “With his long tail hanging down
He quietly sits under every tree
In the folds of his velvet gown”

Wings were enjoying the first of what would turn out to be a run of seven weeks at the top of the UK album chart at this time back in 1974 with Band On the Run, which didn’t include this song, although it was a hit single in the States and was included on the US version of the album (against Paul’s wishes): ‘Helen Wheels’.

About the McCartneys’ faithful Land Rover, the chorus goes thusly:

“Helen, hell on wheels
Ain’t nobody else gonna know the way she feels
Helen, hell on wheels
And they’re never gonna take her away”

But the topic today is not songs about motor vehicles, but songs about girls.

Here are ten nine for you to identify. Name that lady. One is the name of my car, as it happens.

I hope you can add a few of your own for others to ponder.

Songs about boys next time; there’s no sexual favouritism here, I’ll have you know.

The chatroom, by the way, will open tomorrow at 2pm (UK). See you there.

01. “Maybe just a good night’s sleep
Would have changed your troubled mind”

02. “She stood there laughing
I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more”

03. “Where did your long hair go?
Where is the girl I used to know?”

04. “I met her in a club down in old Soho
Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like cherry cola”

05. “She grew up in an Indiana town
Had a good-lookin’ mama who never was around”

06. “She is like a cat in the dark
And then she is the darkness”

07. “She listens for the ticking of my footsteps, patiently
She sifts the hairy air that’s warm and wood-swept, pleasantly”

08. “She came and stood right by me
Then the smell of sweet perfume”

09. “I used to carry her satchel
She used to walk by my side”

10. “One year ago underneath the summer sun
She was just a restless child”

I take it that you’ve all seen David performing with the legendary Al Green on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross by now. It’s available on BBC iPlayer until the weekend and on the ever-dependable YouTube until (if) forced off in shame.

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that, never mind a choice scattering of Desert Island Discs, Al Green would be the most perfect castaway to spend a potential lifetime stranded with on a desert island? What a jolly man.

There’s something quite special about artists you’ve always admired unexpectedly collaborating in some shape or form. If you’d been asked – and, let’s be honest, you probably once were – to list all the musicians you’ve ever harboured hopes of some day seeing David make music with, would you have thought of Al Green?

It was a real treat, all the more so because it was so unanticipated.

For fun, and also as a demonstration of optimism, which we all need now and then (now that anything is possible, right?), which artist or artists would you most like to see David perform with? In fitting with the Friday Night with Jonathan Ross performance, David should be the backing musician rather than the lead. Stand-out performances for me back in the real world include B.B. King, The Who and Paul McCartney, yet the list is longer still. If you want to let your imagination run wild, which seems to me to be a very encouraging thing to do on a Monday, please elaborate further: where and what would they perform?

The chatroom will be open tomorrow from 4pm (UK), which is terrible timing, now that I notice that not one but two World Cup matches kick off at 4pm (UK). As ever, please see the calendar for future-dated chats and Twitter for examples of the absurdly random things that we tend to examine. Likely topics tomorrow, it goes without saying, will be Mexico-Uruguay, France-South Africa and vuvuzelas.

New faces in the last few chat sessions have been very welcome. If you’ve not visited before, don’t be shy or too disappointed (surprised?) to learn that David does not chat. It’s fans-only, but we’ve a nice bunch; if you’ve nothing better to do tomorrow, you know where to find us. Vuvuzelas and Dutch beer welcome.

On this day in 1963, at London’s Olympic Studios, the Rolling Stones recorded what would be their first single. As was common for aspiring British bands at the time, it was a Chuck Berry number. Anyone know which one?

The Rolling Stones also covered ‘Beautiful Delilah’, as, I’m sure you know only too well, did a certain Cambridge band called Jokers Wild.

Which are your favourite Chuck Berry songs, as covered by other acts? This page from Chuck Berry’s official website might help.

When I got to thinking about it, although it shouldn’t have taken much thought nor come as a surprise, there are several notable cover versions of the same songs. So, let me know which you like best; I’ve included some links for you.

- ‘Brown-Eyed Handsome Man’: Buddy Holly and The Crickets, Paul McCartney, Nina Simone

- ‘Carol’: The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Status Quo

- ‘Johnny B. Goode’: Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Sex Pistols

- ‘Memphis, Tennessee’: The Animals, Rod Stewart and the Faces, Johnny Winters

- ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’: Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bobby Vee

- ‘You Never Can Tell’: Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter, Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance

Today is also Donovan’s birthday, another artist whose songs have been covered habitually and the ‘Cosmic King of the Sixties’, as he has been labelled. Perhaps you can play some of his gentle, airy tunes in honour of one of the finest, most naturally-talented poets and influential composers I can think of. This is one of my favourites, although ‘Mellow Yellow’ somehow seems so appropriate today, and has done since the early hours of Friday morning. Funny, that.

Ten years ago to the day, almost to the hour, in fact, David was performing with Paul McCartney at Liverpool’s legendary Cavern Club before a crowd of 300 incredibly lucky so-and-sos.

Available on DVD as of 2001 (Paul McCartney, Live at The Cavern Club!), the show went out as a live webcast and is estimated to have been watched by some three million people worldwide – then a record for an online audience. A giant screen broadcast the performance to the many thousands gathered in a nearby park.

Did you see it at the time, have you seen it since, and what did you make of it?

Paul’s band also consisted of Deep Purple drummer, Ian Paice, Pete Wingfield on keyboards and the legendary Mick Green (of Johnny Kidd & The Pirates) on guitar.

For fun, if David could put together a similar band of talents to perform covers of anyone’s songs in any style, who would you want to see in the line-up, where would you want to see them and what would they play? As the Cavern gig’s set was an oh-so short one, I’ll have to limit you to choosing not much more than 45-minutes of material, please, so choose wisely… and not ‘Pink Floyd’.

How about recreating Jokers Wild somewhere in or around Cambridge, possibly involving a few early Beatles and Stones numbers, perhaps a smidgen of Sam & Dave, but almost certainly Manfred Mann’s brilliant ‘Don’t Ask Me What I Say’?

The chatroom will be opening for its final session of 2009 on Wednesday. Please note that there is a change to the time as has been advertised for the last week or so, thus the chatroom will now be open from 1pm (UK). Hope to see you there.

Another surprise appearance from David last night, then (see the Latest News page for the whats and wherfores) – this time with Jeff Beck at London’s Royal Albert Hall, scene of the shows that made up the ‘Remember That Night’ DVD.

If you were there, I’m sure we’d all love to hear from you.

If you weren’t there, please take a moment to stop kicking yourself and tell us which of David’s many guest appearances has pleased you most, however surprising they may have been.

In terms of one-off shows, that 1999 gig at Liverpool’s Cavern – with Paul McCartney, Mick Green, Ian Paice and Pete Wingfield – has to be my favourite.

Have you heard about this? See Paul McCartney’s video message, here, which explains why it’s a good idea for everyone to reduce their unhealthy dependence upon meat and commit to a weekly meat-free day. (If you’ve got the time and desire to find out more, you can do worse than read Compassion in World Farming Trust’s 2004 report, ‘The Global Benefits of Eating Less Meat’).

Meat production has undeniably become a serious environmental hazard. A huge strain on the Earth’s resources, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, the world’s livestock population is responsible for some 18% of greenhouse gas emissions. The transport industry is responsible for 13%.

Livestock production uses 8% of the world’s (increasingly scarce) fresh water supplies. Indeed, you use more water producing meat than you do grain.

Animal waste pollutes. In North Carolina, USA, for example, there are roughly as many pigs as there are people… and the pigs produce four times as much waste.

With increased prosperity, we are consuming more meat. The World Cancer Research Fund recommends that we eat no more than 500g of red meat each week – roughly the equivalent of three 6oz steaks.

In the West, where meat consumption is at its highest, one billion people are overweight. Developing nations have adopted a similarly unhealthy, meat-based diet. Even though the West eats three times as much meat as the rest of the world, meat consumption in ‘poorer’ countries has doubled in just over a decade.

The demand for meat is a major cause of deforestation. Estimates suggest that 70% of the Amazonian rainforest has been flattened to make way for livestock.

Worldwide, about 200 million hectares of forest has been lost since the ’60s, much of it cleared to rear cattle for the hamburger trade – vulgarly referred to as “hamburgerisation” – or to grow subsidised crops for, you guessed it, animal feed.

Consequently, one way or another, livestock now claims more than 30% of our planet’s land surface.

Lastly, and perhaps the fundamental reason for vegetarianism: factory farming is irrefutably inhumane. Millions of living creatures, bred only to be slaughtered after often brief, miserable lives of deprivation and suffering in intensive farms, do not exercise, enjoy fresh air, graze casually or interact with other animals. Selective breeding to ensure unnatural growth has created myriad health problems and deformities, which further add to the animals’ unnecessary suffering.

So, with all this in mind, if you don’t already, will you forgo meat on a Monday from now on? As Paul says, “it not only addresses pollution, but better health, the ethical treatment of animals, global hunger and community and political activism.”

Today just so happens to be Paul’s birthday, so a very Happy Birthday to him.

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On this day in 1964, The Beatles made their American television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. More than 70 million viewers tuned in for what was the first of three legendary appearances throughout February.

Unless you’ve got a very good reason not to, perhaps you’d care to take ten minutes out of your day to enjoy this classic footage. It is, undeniably, an important piece of both music, and TV, history.

So, as well as your feelings towards those four lovable mop-tops, it’s Beatles songs that David could cover today, please.

You probably know that David and Syd spent some time busking together in 1965, performing songs from ‘Help!’, in France. You ought to know that David performed with Paul McCartney at Liverpool’s famed Cavern Club in 1999. That’s been captured for posterity on DVD, as has another gig, in aid of PETA, billed ‘The PETA Concert for Party Animals’. I’d like to know what you thought of those two.

Any other Beatles connections, do send them in. There are many.

Finally, following on from our Rock and Roll ruminations last week, how about The Beatles’ ‘Live at the BBC’ for some great classic covers? I’m thinking specifically of the raw vocals of Paul and John respectively on Little Richard’s ‘Lucille’ and Chuck Berry’s ‘Rock and Roll Music’, classic Ringo on the Carl Perkins number, ‘Matchbox’, and George’s fine guitar-playing on the unmistakeable ‘Johnny B. Goode’.