07 Sep, 2009 My Beatles
I wonder how many other songwriters spent most of all last week in a state of mini – ecstasy as a spate of new song ideas were coming together. Only to then switch on to the BBC’s recent television documentaries featuring a band so enormously talented that it left them thinking, “Oh dear, what is the point in all of this, why should I even try?”
Actually I exaggerate a tad, re being left that crestfallen. I don’t exaggerate however in my evaluation of the Beatles who are currently all over the media as they get set to release yet some other new product as groundbreaking as ever.
And yet I say this as someone who is quite far from being a “complete Beatles nut” in the way that many musicians I have worked with are. None more so than original Simple Minds bassist Derek Forbes and current collaborator and keyboardist Andy Gillespie, both of whom have encyclopaedic knowledge of the “Fab Four” and are seemingly able to trace every current musical move back to an all encompassing source otherwise known as the Beatles.
I do love Liverpool and the world’s finest nonetheless and within that love there lies a huge and overwhelming admiration and respect for almost all that they created. So overwhelming in fact, it is impossible not to take their achievements for granted, in the same way that in the physical world it is difficult not to take something like the colossal ingenuity of the Roman empire for granted, particularly as we stumble about on a daily basis dealing with intricacies of our own little world.
And yet for sometime now I have questioned myself over how it could be then that despite growing up as a toddler in the early sixties, – when the music of the Beatles was omnipresent in the surrounding air – that it was not their influence that in the end inspired me to get involved with music, as plainly as it was with groups like the Velvet Underground, Roxy Music, The Doors, and so many others. A couple of reasons why that is have struck me recently!
The first being that my association with the Beatles begins not with playing their records repeatedly, as I did non – stop with the bands previously mentioned. No, the Beatles songs in fact came to me much earlier through the tiny radio that sat on our kitchen table. But more than that even, much of their repertoire first came to my ears through the voice of my young mother who seemed to be singing constantly to herself as she readied us for school and went about the housework.
Being a factory girl previously, she told me that she and her work colleagues passed much of their working hours singing loudly to the songs from the “hit parade”. It helped drown out some of the incessant noise from the heavy industrial machinery, it also made them feel good as the busied themselves through long working hours. Well, in those days the Beatles “owned” the “hit parade” and with that being so seemingly everyone in the country knew their simple words and pretty melodies.
Additionally, it has dawned on me that the Beatles I first knew were as much a comedy act as anything else. This is probably an understandable view given that I went to see all their films and therefore knew them as much for their horseplay as they cavorted around pulling all sorts of pranks in movies like ‘Help’ and ‘A Hard Days Night’.
This more than all probably influenced my perception of them as being all round family entertainers, as opposed to the dangerous, hard to fathom out type musicians, that were to captivate me once I came of age enough to go into the centre of town myself. Where upon I would rumble through the album racks that filled the shops of those days, my only mission during those trips was to find an album from some group or other that no one I knew had ever heard of, and to which I could indulge my enthusiasm and call – my very own! No one could do that with something already as ubiquitously famous as the Beatles now, could they?
I suppose following on then from that period, they remained perennially in the background to whatever else was going on in my life. I of course like everyone else soon got to know more and more about the emerging personal animosities and the soap opera leading to the gradual break up of the band, as well as the reports of the on going feud between Lennon and McCartney as they eventually went about beginning solo careers. I tuned in nevertheless, and like most of the world observed something over the next few that was once so fun filled, become so dull, dark, and twisted.
Thinking about it now, I recall feeling rather innocently from the outside, that it was a true pity to see such obvious former great mates fall out over only God knows what. That hollow feeling was present also on witnessing the announcement that the Beatles had finally split and would never work together again. As young as I was, I knew that culturally speaking, an era had passed and that something very unique had come to an end. But I was also developing my own persona and my tastes that went with it. The Beatles split! Bah! I convinced myself that there was easily much more to music than my mum and dad’s old music favourites. And with that I gave not much more thought to the greatest group ever.
Less than a decade later and during the various London recording sessions of Simple Minds debut Life In A Day. (Any connection to the Beatles very own Day In A Life?)
Our very own resident “Beatles nut”, Derek Forbes was beside himself with excitement as we wandered through the front door reception of Abbey Road Studios in St John’s Wood. Our producer John Leckie, who had himself trained as an engineer in those hallowed premises, had in his wisdom reckoned that a week spent in the very same studio that had spawned most of the Beatles shatteringly successful music, would do nothing but inspire a band of Glaswegian novices to go beyond themselves in their desire to impress. He was more wrong than right!
In Derek’s case, inspiration might well of been the result. But in my experience, I have to say that I found the environment without a shadow of a doubt to be a step too far and much to soon. Abbey Road and it’s history with the Beatles was just too overwhelming a situation for me as a young buck who had hardly even been in any of our local recording facilities, never mind the world’s most well known. We had until then never even made a record before remember!
And how could it not be overpowering as a first experience? Especially as we scanned the room to witness still standing, in the same corner, some of the very same equipment that of all things had some years previously been used on and by the Beatles? It was simply way too much for me to be in those same corridors, under those same lights, sat on the very same chairs in some instances as the world’s greatest. No one really is able to follow in the footsteps of Beatles after all, or are they? And if it so, it is not something you would want to be dwelling on that much, as you go trying to establish your own identity.
And with that, least in my opinion and for the best part of a week, we fumbled about Abbey Rd studios somewhat like a party of school kids agog at suddenly finding themselves visiting the inner sanctums of the Pyramids of Giza!
Interestingly enough to this day we have never set foot again in Abbey Road studios, but should we do so, would I expect to be so uncontrollably overwhelmed as I was back then? The answer is of course no, and that is not just because I am older and hopefully wiser. It is because although I do believe that no group has either the talent or the legacy to even nearly match the Beatles. It is simply not the case that one should bother considering how to follow in the footsteps of another – no matter what it is you do with your life. All that’s important in my opinion is that within whatever it is you do. You must make sure that it will amount to your best effort. That is what will count in the end!
The Beatles are the Beatles, and their legacy shines on proudly as strongly now as ever. But beyond them I believe that the world can never have enough great music no matter who is making it!” It is that thought that has me once again looking forward to the on coming week as I along with Andy Gillespie go about hunting the basics of brand new songs that I hope will be not only made, but heard and enjoyed by many like me who depend on the effect of music to entertain and uplift.
Finally, as I am back in Glasgow it is only natural that I go over to my parent’s house to spend time. I would be lying to say that that there is not a fair amount of photos of my brothers and I on their walls, parents are all the same after all. However I did notice this time, that pride of place among them is a particularly fair sized framed portrait. Obviously special, it is one in which I am sandwiched between non other than the worlds best known bass player and his once brave and lovely wife Linda. It was taken backstage at a concert of ours in Stockholm. All three of us are grinning like mad!
Happy days!
Jim Kerr