August 2014: A conversation with Searchers singer-guitarist Mike Pender

To be an American just awakening to music at the beginning of 1964 was to be swept away with the British Invasion. I was a Beatles fan first, of course, and did watch their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show that Feb. 9. But soon I was an avid listener of WLS in Chicago, listening to the Silver Dollar Survey countdown and catching the latest by Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Peter and Gordon and the Searchers.

The Searchers’ first hit here was “Needles and Pins,” and its catchy guitar part was one of the first things I tried to learn once I knew a few chords. I still crank up the volume when I hear it today. For that matter, the volume goes up for other Searchers hits such as “When You Walk in the Room,” “Don’t Throw Your Love Away” and “Someday We’re Gonna Love Again.”

When I saw Searchers singer-guitarist Mike Pender’s name on the guest list for this year’s Chicago Fest for Beatles Fans, I knew I’d want to interview him for my annual Fest preview in the Chicago Sun-Times. You can find the Sun-Times story here: http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/29243291-421/story.html#.U-9qr6NhfNU

As with other interviews in this blog, space limitations meant I could use only a couple of quotes from a longer interview. But Pender was a great interview, with a lifetime of musical experiences to talk about. Here’s the full interview:

John Grochowski: Mike, thanks for taking the time to talk. We’re looking forward to seeing you here.

Mike Pender: Actually, I’ll be back in America again in September with Mike Pender’s Searchers. We’re touring with some of the other ’60s bands.

JG: That’s great. When’s the last time you were in Chicago?

MP: My memory doesn’t go back that far!

JG: (Laughs) I figured it had probably been a long while …

MP: Early ’60s yeah. When we’ve been in America in the last 40 years, we would have gone to New York, and I was in Springfield, Massachusetts, last year,. I did the Big E Festival, which is the typical sort of American festival they have with lots of musical people around, I was the ’60s segment. So it’s a long time since I’ve been in Chicago.

JG: Have you done other Beatle fests? Were you in New York?

MP: To be honest I’ve not done a lot with Beatles shows or Beatles festivals. The only time I’ve done a gig with the Beatles was in the ’60s. It would have been very early, about 1964, and it would have been put on by Brian Epstein down in London at one of the theaters there. I cannot remember a lot of gigs with the Beatles. Maybe two.

JG: But in the early days, you were playing the same venues in Liverpool, the Cavern and the other clubs

MP: We all played the Cavern, the Iron Door, lots of other gigs like St. John’s Hall Bootle, which is where I come from, Litherland Town Hall. Yeah, we did all the gigs because nobody was famous then, we were all just hanging around playing for beer money if you like, enjoying ourselves.

In fact the first time I ever saw the Beatles was at St. John’s Hall Bootle. I still had my job, and I got home from work and washed and changed to go along to the gig, and when I got to the gig and went to the dressing room, or what we called a dressing room, there were no chairs in those days. There were five guys sitting around on the floor in leather gear and cowboy boots, and they were called the Silver Beatles then. That was the first time I ever saw them. It was their second gig in England after getting back from Hamburg, Germany. And the Searchers were top of the bill that night. When I got to the gig at St. John’s Hall, they had a poster, the Searchers, and underneath, from Hamburg, the Silver Beatles. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen them.

JG: Tell me about what you were playing in those days. I know as American fans, we heard “Some Other Guy” as an album track from you long before we saw the clip of the Beatles playing it at the Cavern. What were you playing in the clubs?

MP: Nearly all American music from Chuck Berry to Little Richard to Jerry Lee Lewis. Hardly any of the groups played English stuff in those days. They only time they did was some of the groups played instrumentals by the Shadows and later by the American group, the Ventures. But yeah, “Johnny B. Goode,” “Rock and Roll Music.” Most groups did all the same songs. We started off like that, and then we tried to be a little bit different. We actually got a lead singer, a guy called Johnny Sandon, and we brought him into the band. We were prompted to do that by a guy called Bob Wooler. Do you remember Bob Wooler?

JG: Yes, I actually met Bob Wooler in Liverpool.

MP: Bob was they guy at all the venues in Liverpool in those days, and he said “Mike, you guys would be better with a lead vocalist,” and we got this guy Johnny Sandon. And he sounded a bit like Jim Reeves, Johnny Cash. And so we were a little bit different from the other groups we when went to Cavern and the Iron Door, where the Beatles and Rory Storm and the Hurricanes and whoever were doing out and out rock and roll things. We were a little bit further afield and did those types of songs. We used to do lunchtime sessions at the Cavern. Everybody did. And I used to find that a lot of people from the local offices would come in their shirts and ties, and they’d come because we were a little bit different, and they could hear something different like maybe a Jim Reeves song. So we were a little bit different in those days.

JG: By the time “Needles and Pins” hit in the U.S., and other hits like “Love Potion No. 9,” Johnny Sandon was gone and you were singing. How did the change happen?

MP: It’s funny how it comes about. There were no meetings, no sort of thrashing out, “Mike you’re going to do this, Mike you’re going to do that.” It happened.

I didn’t sing “Love Potion No. 9.” Tony Jackson – the original band was Tony, Chris Curtis, John McNally and myself – Tony actually sang those types of songs. He had the Little Richard voice, he could get his voice way up high, and he sang “Love Potion No. 9,” and he sang our first record “Sweets for My Sweet.”

We had a bit of a confrontation with the record company after the first two big hits, which were “Sweets for My Sweet” and “Sugar and Spice.” And we felt that we had to change a little beit because the first two songs were very similar, if you recall those two songs.

JG: In Chicago, we heard covers of those first two. The Cryan Shames had a big hit here with “Sugar and Spice.”

MP: Right. The two (“Sweets for My Sweet” and “Sugar and Spice”) were in a very similar vein. And record companies do that, because when they have a big success with one record, they tend to want another record in a similar vein. So we did that in the first two, then we thought the next one has to be something different. We thought “Needles and Pins,” and the people at Pye records weren’t too keen. They said if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it. You have to do another like the first two.

We got our way in the end, but we had to argue with the record company and they finally came around to our way of thinking and we did “Needles and Pins.” And it just so happened that I sang “Needles and Pins” on stage with the band. So it was just kind of Mike sings it on stage with the band, lets put it down and see what happens, and if it isn’t good we can change. But Tony Hatch, our recording manager said. “That’s it.” We even left my “pins-uh” in.

When we were recording that song, people from Liverpool have this knack of putting little things on the ends of words, and I just sang “pins-uh,” and Tony Hatch said, “Hey that sounds good, we’re going to leave it in.” So we left it in. That’s just one of those little quirks that you get now and then.

JG: Another distinctive part of your sound was that 12-string Rickenbacker. Was that you? How did that come about?

MP: That’s The Beatles connection there. We were in the TV studios in England for a show called “Thank Your Lucky Stars” in those early ’60s. “We were in the dressing room and we had the TV on, and the Beatles came on singing their latest No. 1 single, which was “A Hard Day’s Night,” because that movie that they made had just been released. They weren’t there in the studios, they recorded it somewhere.

“I noticed that the guitar in that song, in the solo, it sounded a little bit different. And when I looked up, I looked at the screen, I thought, hey I’d seen Rickenbackers before because John Lennon had one in the early days in the Cavern, that he bought in Hamburg. And I looked and I thought, wow, it’s a 12-string Rickenbacker.

We had a new single coming up. We hadn’t recorded it, but we had it in the grapevine, if you like, we had it planned. That’s the sound for “When You Walk in the Room.” And I went out and got a Rickenbacker 12, it was a 360-12, and that’s the sound you hear on “When You Walk In the Room.”

JG: It’s a great sound. I love that sound.

MP: Yeah, it is, and probably if on that day I hadn’t walked in the dressing room and seen George Harrison play his, who knows, I may never have got one, and we’d have gone some other way like double-tracking or something like that.

JG: When did you first have an inkling that this was going to take off, that the Searchers were going to become something bigger than the club circuit?

MP: To be honest with you, I didn’t have that feeling until we recorded “Sweets for My Sweet.” When we went to the Star Club in Hamburg, I had a very good job in Liverpool with a big printing firm, and they actually gave me a month’s leave. Can you believe that? They said “Mike, you go do that, we know you want to do it, but your job’s still here when you come back.”

“I couldn’t; believe it really. I thought I was going to be working at Birchall’s for the rst of my life. I had a girlfriend and I thought, “I have a good job, we’re going to save up. And I’m going to earn money working and playing in a band.” I didn’t have any inkling that we were going to be recording stars or anything like that. We came back from the Star Club, and we signed up to go again. We were there for two months that time.

And when we were in the Star Club, our manager in Liverpool at the time, a guy called Ed Napoli, we’d done an acetate of maybe 10 or 12 songs in the Iron Door, and we left it to Ed to sort of hawk around, if you like, and see what he could do with it. And while we were at the Star Club, he got in touch with record companies that turned him down, all except one, and that was Pye Records.

Tony Hatch, their producer, came up to Liverpool when we got back to Hamburg, came to the Iron Door,. We did a session, he liked it, Bam! Bingo. He said “I want to record that song ‘Sweets for My Sweet,’ I want the boys to come to London,” and we did. And then I thought, wow, I can’t believe it, we just made a record. So you could say from about summer 1963 I thought, “It’s going to happen. I had an inkling we may hit the big time.”

JG: You had so many hits, then time passed, you faded from the charts. But you had that great comeback album in 1979 (“The Searchers”) that was so well reviewed. How did that happen? 

MP: The Sire Records thing? That was the early ‘80s wasn’t it? We’d been obviously in and around the music scene since about 1968 when really our popularity had dwindled and the big record hits had gone. So we kept going to the studio and we kept trying to make a good record, but it just didn’t happen.

Seymour Stein had had groups like the Ramones on his record label, and the Ramones seemed to like our kind of music. I think they recorded “Needles and Pins,” and Seymour Stein said, “I wonder what the original Searchers are doing.” He came to England, although we weren’t still the originals because Tony and  Chris had gone. It was just John and myself and a guy called Frank Allen and a guy called Billy Adamson.

We were still performing, we had lots of gigs on the continent. Seymour Stein came to see us. And he actually said, “Mike, your voice still great, we’re going to put you guys back in the charts.” We did a couple of albums, one was released in America, and I think Rolling Stone magazine gave us a great review. Lots of people liked it. But it’s the old story. It doesn’t matter how good your product is, if nobody buys it, it’s no good. It’s a disappointment. After that of course, when they had success with the Pretenders and other groups, they more or less dropped us. We were left to go our own way again and we’ve been in and around music ever since.

In 1985 I decided, if I’m going to play Searchers hits the rest of my life, I think I’ll form my own band. And I formed Mike Pender’s Searchers,. And here I am today.

JG: When you tour, when you come back to America in September, what can we expect?

MP: Obviously we’re going to do all the early hits, because that’s what they booked us for. Nostalgia. Nostalgia is still pretty big around the world today. I find you go to all the continental countries, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, and there’s lots of people who still want to hear those sounds of the ’60s. Certain songs stick in people’s memories. “When you Walk in the Room” has that certain hook line, “dah-DAH-dah-da-da-da,” and people cotton onto those sorts of things. They remember them and they remember the riff in “Needles and Pins” as well.

So two great songs for us there, plus “Sweets for My Sweet” is always remembered, “Sugar and Spice” is sometimes remembered. One of the great songs I thought we recorded was “Goodbye My Love.” It’s not remembered by a lot of people but I thought it was a really good record.

And even songs that were on the Sire album, like “Hearts in Her Eyes,” I thought was a great single. I always thought, when we started in this business, we had a manager called Peter Burns and he was a guy, he took us to America, he could do it. When you have somebody like that, when you’re trying to make it in the charts, if you haven’t; got somebody like that at the helm, you’re pretty much going to miss out. With songs like “Hearts in Her Eyes,”  it was a great song released on the Sire label, it should have been a hit, but it wasn’t.

We still do that song, so it’s going to be a mix of the old hits with newer songs like “Hearts in our Eyes,” “I Don’t Want to Be the One.” We had some great singles later on. I thought “I Don’t Want to Be the One” was a great song. But with no management, no publicity agent, you’re going to be up against it.

JG: At the Beatles fest, will you be singing with the house band, Liverpool?

MP: For the first time in my life, I’m going to do a Beatle song. Because the Beatles were there because they were superstars, a supergroup. I always concentrated on the Searchers and never got into (playing) the Beatles music at all. It was always there, and people would say “Hey Mike, are you going to play a Beatles song?” And I always said no, because byu the time we’d done the Searchers songs there’s no time left to do anyone else’s song. So really it’s going to be the first time doing a Beatles song in my life, and it’s going to be because I got the connection from George Harrison’s Rickenbacker from seeing him play “A Hard Day’s Night.” That’s the song I’m going to do with the house band, because I think it’s a good story.

  

A 2008 conversation with Elisabeth Sladen

When the Chicago TARDIS convention announced in 2008 that Elisabeth Sladen would be one of the special guests that November, my first thought was that she was the absolutely perfect choice. She’d played Sarah Jane Smith for one “Doctor Who” season with Third Doctor Jon Pertwee, then for two full seasons and part of a third with Doctor No. 4 Tom Baker. Sarah Jane, a journalist with a nose for stories that often got her into trouble, was one of the most popular characters in series history.

In the 1980s, she came back to star in a special, “K-9 and Company,” meant as a pilot for a series that was never picked up. No matter. When the revived “Doctor Who” series wanted a touchstone with  the original series, they brought Sarah Jane back in “School Reunion” with Tenth Doctor David Tennant in 2007. By the time of the 2008 Chicago TARDIS, she’d appeared in two more “Doctor Who” episodes and been spun off into her own series, “The Sarah Jane Adventures.”

She was the ideal bridge between old series and new, appealing to young and old fans alike. I sold the Weekend editor of the Chicago Sun-Times on featuring Lis Sladen in a preview of the convention. Lis was a great interview, gracious with her time on the phone, and equally gracious when I met her backstage at the convention.

Sadly, Elisabeth Sladen passed on in 2011, and she is sorely missed.

As with the Beatles-related interviews I’ve posted on this blog, I was able to use three or four short quotes in the Sun-Times story, pulled from a much longer interview. Here’s a transcript.

JG: Lis, this is a real pleasure for me. I loved your era in “Doctor Who” with Tom Baker. And they keep bringing you back, with “K-9 and Company,” appearances in the revived Doctor Who series and now “The Sarah Jane Adventures.” Why do you think the producers keep returning to Sarah Jane Smith?

ES: We were bloody good, for one thing. And people just seemed to like her. I do.

JG: There’s a core to Sarah Jane who’s the same character we knew in the 1970s, but she’s evolved.

ES: Just as you evolve yourself. Just as you evolve yourself.  I bring things to it now, I think of doing “The Stolen Earth” [with 10th Doctor David Tennant] and meeting Davros again, and I have so much to scavenge from in reality in the past that’s tangible. You go on a journey in your life, Act One, Act Two, Act Three.

I remember coming back with David for the first time  [in “School Reunion]. I would get letters from people who had never seen the show before but had bought the videos or the DVDs. Although it was a dead program to television at the time, it was never dead to the public, because people would buy it and see something that had been on before they were born. So I would still get letters from youngsters who’d never seen the character or Doctor Who as a television program, and quite a lot of the questions would be where would she be now, and especially from the older fans. Where do you think she would be? And Toby [Whithouse’s] story tied up so perfectly with where I thought she would be that it wasn’t exactly a stretch. It was a gift.

JG: In “The Sarah Jane Adventures,” you essentially have the Doctor’s role …

ES: Yes.

JG: … with companions of your own to look after. How does that change your approach?

ES: Whereas before the character could leap before she thought, now she has to think before she leaps. Because you are responsible for these little people. I thought I might get a lot of stick actually over the sonic lipstick, which I think is wonderful. It’s difficult to use, actually. David is so lucky. All he does with the sonic screwdriver is point it and light it. With the lipstick I have to take the top off and swivel it up, and then light it. I thought the fans watching might think “Who does she think she is?” But I haven’t heard any of that. I was quite prepared for it because you know fans of any series, especially sci-fi, are quite proprietorial in their likes and dislikes, but they’ve been very kind.

We never talk down to them. Russell T. Davies started his career writing for children’s television, and to actually go back and write for it now, because this is his baby, I think is just great.

JG: In the ’70s, you were companion to two Doctors, Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, and now you’ve appeared with David Tennant. How do the Doctors differ?

ES: Jon’s Doctor, he was thought of as  protective, even with his uniform as the Doctor, his cloak, protective around the little chicks. That was Jon as well. He very much wanted to be the one who would be the protector. Tom’s Doctor was very much more do it on your own come back and report. And going from Jon to Tom was really lovely because you can only see what the Doctor gives you. So if you get different things from each Doctor it enlarges you as a character, different facets come into play, how you handle people in reality, in real life. And all the Doctors are so different that I’ve worked with that that was actually a bonus. And David being a younger Doctor you just look at him … “Oh, THAT’s the Doctor now.:

JG: Do you think you and Tom both being from Liverpool had anything to do with you working so well together?

ES: I wonder you know. I think maybe there’s something in the sense of humor. We got on so well. It just was so easy with Tom. For me anyway.

JG: Not everyone got along quite so well with Tom. But you enjoyed working with him?

ES: Oh, he was an absolute love, and still is. I suppose, you see, I was with him at the beginning. Tom says, “Oh, Elizabeth and I got on so well because she always laughed at my jokes.” That’s just Tom, that’s what he’s like. He always stands back a little bit and not give the real reasons sometimes. I think just it worked well with Tom and I. When he went on after me, he played the Doctor for a long time. When I was working with him you’d still get things in the script and go, ‘Has that happened before? How can we make that different?’ And that was the challenge. When it stopped being a challenge for me, I left. I suppose people change as time goes on, you know. But he was never difficult with me. He was great fun. He wanted it right, but don’t we all.

JG: How did your return to the new series come to pass?

ES: My agent phoned up asked me they wanted to take me for a meal, Phil Collinson  and Russell T. Davies, and it was about Doctor Who, and I thought, it must be Sarah Jane. And I’d seen some of the early episodes that they’d done with David and with Christopher Eccleston. I knew that that they were fans of the time that I was in the series. So I thought that’s a lovely little homage to Sarah Jane, uniting the two factions, the old and the new.

But I left it on such a high [when she left at the end of the Tom Baker story “The Hand of Fear”] I thought, “Do I really want to do something? I’d rather leave her where she was.” I thought, “By the time I finish this meal I won’t have an agent.” And we went along and they immediately put forth the story. And they said if you don’t want to do it, we won’t do this story, but this is what we would like. But they went into detail and it was just so lovely. It was kind of done deal and we just ordered more wine and had a lovely evening. And I thought what a lovely place to leave her. How really special. It went down well, and after it had gone out that New Year, the agent said they’d like to take you out for another meal, Julie and Russell, and talk about something else. And I thought, “Is Sarah Jane going to grow up at last and be in Torchwood?” And then Russell put it forth and said he had absolute faith in it. I don’t know that I did. I thought, “My God, can this work?” I think I said that to him. He said “Yep. We’re going to call it the Sarah Jane Adventures.” He knew right from the start exactly what he wanted.

JG: Now that you’re into “The Sarah Jane Adventures,” are you happy you said yes?

ES: It is an absolute joy to do. When I was in Doctor Who, the actors who’d come to join us as guest stars, they’d say, you have such a wonderful time. How lovely. What a gorgeous job. And it is just a joy. That’s due to the people behind the cameras as well. The crew are great, they really are. We have the same production values as Doctor Who because we have the same crew. We’re very lucky, because Sarah Jane’s a five-day week and I think Doctor Who’s a six-day week.

JG: I was looking at your bio on IMDB, and being an old fan of ‘60s music, it jumped out at me that you were in “Ferry Cross the Mersey” with Gerry and the Pacemakers.

ES: Oh I was at drama school. I was doing a play in the evening, a Shakespeare, so it was a full day, and I don’t know how long we were on it actually. It was just literally to be there for Gerry, and I remember the boat going back and forth to Birkenhead or wherever it was and turn around and come back. That was my first pay packet, a pound a day or something.

JG: You were the right age, growing up in Liverpool, to have this fantastic music scene all around you. Did you go to the clubs, experience all that?

ES: Oh yes, because when I was in school the Beatles were all up and coming. Although I actually preferred Elvis, but you support your home team. I did, and was great. They really took the heart out of Liverpool when they took the docks away. City of Culture, fifth year, I haven’t been back for about four years now. If I went back today, it’s changed a lot. When I first went into theater it was at the Liverpool Playhouse. I worked there for a year and I loved it.

JG: During fan conventions, you’re at work. But besides the job, what do you get out of conventions?

ES: One to one contact with the fans. You get exactly what they like and exactly what they don’t like. Sometimes they’ll pose questions and you’ll think, “Oh, I really haven’t had that, I really didn’t think of that.” And how lovely for people to appreciate to tell you all these things you never thought of. It’s not an audience you have to fight for. I don’t know any other audience like it. How lucky am I? And there are people who are not around anymore who obviously I miss, and when questions are asked about them, how lovely to be able to reminisce about them.

A conversation with Denny Laine

Denny Laine has been to the Chicago Fest for Beatles Fans several times, and always is a crowd favorite. A member of Wings from beginning to end, he was the one stalwart who accompanied Paul and Linda McCartney to Nigeria for sessions that turned into the band’s best-loved album, “Band on the Run.”

Before Wings, Denny was the original lead singer in the Moody Blues, when they had a simpler, bluesier sound than the orchestral approach that later backed singer Justin Hayward. It’s Laine’s voice on “Go Now,”  a 1965 No. 1 hit in the U.K., No. 10 in the  U.S., and later a Wings concert staple.

I spoke with Laine via a phone call to his Las Vegas home in August 2010 for a Chicago Sun-Times preview of the Fest for Beatles Fans. The newspaper story had three or four short quotes. Here’s a longer transcript of the interview.

JG: Denny thanks for taking the time for this. It’s going to be great to have you back in Chicago. You know, last time you were here, you and Laurence Juber (lead guitarist in Wings’ final lineup) did a panel that I thought was the best Beatlefest had ever had. It was “Beatles Under the Influence,” tracing music that had influenced the young Beatles, and you and Laurence played some things I’d never heard, some blues, old English folk and music hall stuff.

DL: Did we really? You know, Laurence and I weren’t necessarily going through the same experiences. We come at this from different backgrounds. He’s got a lot of knowledge on the other side of the business as well, a more classical training. He doesn’t  just know the groups and the bands, but he has a completely different background of trained musicians and session work and all that kind of thing.

We [British musicians] got it all from the folk world, and that went to America and came back via folk, blues. It’s an exchange thing. I think.

JG: What have you been up to of late? I understand you’re recording again.

DL: It’s taken me a couple of years, but I’m just on the downhill as far as a new album. It’s just being mixed with the last few songs being mixed. The artwork is going to be based on my new website, dennylaine.com, so you can see the style of artwork that is going to be there. It should be already packaged about a month from now. It’s called “Valley of Dreams,” and I’ve been writing over a two-year period or more because I wound up going to England for a year and working over there. I started to write a book.

The album has taken time because I had that year in England. I had to come back and finish here in Vegas with the producer. I didn’t want to go off the beaten track, I wanted to keep the same people, so I just finished it off in the last couple of months.

The other thing is that I’ve had this musical around for 20 years or so that I’ve been trying to put around, an ecological musical. And it didn’t see the light of day earlier on. We did do it with some college kids once. But now UNLV is starting to look at it with their people. It’s called “Arctic Song.” It’s all about the environment. It’s sort of science fiction meets ecology, the world problems, the green issues. Now of course, it’s become so current people may pick up on it.

JG: That sounds like something I’d like to see.

DL: I hope you do.

JG: Wings fans and Beatles fans will want to know, do you have contact with Paul? There was a difficult separation at the end of Wings.

DL: I bumped into Paul one night when we went to UB40, we’re both big reggae fans. We all hooked up. The newspaper got hold of the picture we had taken together, so that went nationwide the next day. It at least showed me and Paul were back on the same page, so that was good.

JG: Looking back, how do you feel about what you did with Wings?

DL: I’m starting to look at stuff again. Who knew that we would still be popular 30 years later, or the music would? It’s been taken over by the kids, the children of the parents who were fans and what not. And I’m getting children who are 12 years old coming to see me. It’s across the board all that music --- especially the Beatles, of course. The music has just lasted and lasted and lasted. And now it’s going into musicals, so you have the “Love” musical, the ABBA musical, “We Will Rock You.” So all those songs have a complete re-emergence.

I’m looking at it with new eyes, I suppose. There are people around me, working with me, who were big fans in the day, and have all the stuff, things I haven’t looked at. I haven’t played a Wings album for years. But now I’m starting to listen, and thinking that was a good band, it was tight, it worked. Especially the ’76 tour [JG—the tour from which “Wings Over America” is drawn]. That really did work. The band was tight, everything was great. Me and Paul had a great relationship. We knew each other really well before Wings even got started. I mean, the Moodys did the Beatles second British tour, we were good friends before all that. And that really came across to me, that we really just gelled in writing together and working together.

I’m more interested at how the band was onstage, and I was quite impressed looking at some the new stuff.

JG: When you were with the Moody Blues, you were playing blues and blues-based rock and roll, and had some good success. Later, they evolved into something completely different, with the lush productions and orchestral backing, a totally different sound. Do you have an insights into the change?

DL: I was watching the Moodys documentary which I am on of course, and found out why they went in that direction. It’s quite hilarious. It’s an uncanny thing

I think [keyboard player] Mike Pinder said since I left, they started getting into more melodic stuff, they weren’t as much of a blues band any more. The original Moodys before the “Go Now” album were a real blues band. We didn’t play any R&B. And it developed into R&B, and “Go Now” came from that batch of songs. But we had the harmonies, we had all the voices, we had singers, so it became an R&B band with harmonies.

We were part of a whole different scene in the ‘60s. We were friends, the Beatles, the Stones, Rod Stewart, the Animals, Tom Jones. All these people were friends of ours. We’d have parties and we used to play each other’s music to each other. If the Beatles had a new song, they’d drop by and play it to us and vice versa. It was a much different world then. People weren’t stars to the point they were off doing their own thing and not mixing with people. The whole thing was kind of a mish-mash of exchanging ideas.

JG: I’ve always loved the “Go Now” album. It’s one I bought in 1965, and I still like to put it on the turntable. I liked that bluesy feel a lot.

DL: Donovan did our liner notes on the back of that album. He was another friend who was hanging around. Brian Jones was another very close friend. We watched everybody make it and go through all their changes. We had a lot of support and a lot of feedback. And we were playing live all the time. We weren’t going into the studio for months on end. It’d take a few weeks to make an album. And then we would go on the road, and on the road you’d get feedback all the time.

JG: Will you be playing any songs from the new album at the Fest?

DL: I won’t be doing it with the band [Liverpool, in its night-closing concerts]. Maybe in my own session. With the band, I sing “Go Now,” “Band on the Run,” “Mull of Kintyre,” “Live and Let Die” ---  sort of my tribute to the Wings thing. Uusally I just do my songs that I did --- “Time to Hide,” “No Words” and stuff like that. I try not to copy Paul’s version if I can help it.

JG: I know you work hard at the Fests. But besides a job for the weekend, what do you get out of the Fests.

DL: Meeting people. Although I don’t do a lot of them. It’s meeting the fans. I get involved in the nostalgia of the whole trip from all our points of view. Most of the time I have some little story people haven’t heard.

I like the thing of all fans being together in one place, because it generates a certain energy that you can’t find anywhere else. It’s not like a normal gig. It’s an occasion.

A conversation with Ronnie Spector

At the Chicago Fest for Beatles Fans in 2009, the band struck up the opening chords to “Be My Baby,” and from the wings came THAT voice … “Uh oh, uh oh oh oh ... ”

Enter Ronnie Spector, looking great and sounding just like she did as lead singer of the Ronettes in 1963. 

Ronnie, former wife of Phil and one of the most distinctive voices of the Wall of Sound, was an early, close --- VERY close --- Beatle friend. Through the highs of the Ronettes’ success, lows of her troubled marriage to Phil Spector, lean times and a comeback that included touring with Bruce Springsteen, Ronnie has continued to give music her all.

I spoke with her a couple of weeks before the Fest for a Chicago Sun-Times preview. At the time, she was putting the finishing touches on her CD, “Last of the Rock Stars,” released later that year.

The running theme of these posts has been that I can only use three or four short quotes in a 400-to-500-word newspaper story, and these folks have had so much to say. Here’s a longer transcript of my conversation with Ronnie Spector.

JG: I’m really looking forward to seeing you in Chicago, and I understand you’re working on a new CD. What can you tell me about it?

RS: The CD is coming out now, I’m just finishing up on the bonus album. And the rest is a secret. The minute I tell people what I’m doing, it spreads like a disease. So this time, I’m not saying anything. The CD is all finished and I’m just putting on the bonus tracks.

JG: You’re still enjoying recording after all these years? 

RS: I’m in  studios, out of studios. It’s what I love, it’s my passion, to be in the studio and have the record come out and see if it’s going to be a hit or a bomb. Either way, I don’t care, I’m moving. I always go up, up, up. I never stay with the oldies or the classics, I’m just there. And I love where I am now.

JG: There’ll be a little looking back at the Fest, though.

RS: Just Beatlefest, because I love them. We were close friends, and I knew them before Beatlemania and all in America, and so we became really good friends, and they took me to places on Carnaby Street, so I could get the hippest outfits. So they were like real friends. 

How it happened was we were on Decca Records, and the Beatles, they were here and there around town, the café and all that, but they wanted to see us, these three girls with the looooong black hair, and the skirts up the thighs. So Decca Records gave a party, because our record over there was like No. 1, and the Beatles weren’t heard of in American yet. Decca threw us a party, and it was so great. John Lennon and I became instant friends. To the point of he was pushing me back into this room, and I had to get like a whip and a chair to get him back to this party, we were having so much fun. He would make you laugh. 

JG: How long was it before you saw them again?

RS: After the Decca party, I don’t remember if it was a couple of days later, you have to remember this was a long time ago, before the Beatles had Beatlemania. And so we went to [disk jockey] Tony Hall’s house, he had given a party at his house, and he had this beautiful townhouse. And so Tony Hall’s wife was showing us all these expensive vases. They had gone all around the world. I didn’t know all this stuff. Here was a girl from Spanish Harlem who had a beehive. What I do I know about all these artists and antiques? Not a thing. But I’d say, “Oh, that’s so beautiful.” John knew I didn’t know, and he came over and told her, let me show her. And she got disgusted and threw her hands up in the air and said, “Oh, you show her the rest of it.”

The other Ronettes were there, and John starts taking me on this tour. Forget about the vases and antiques, because he knows I don’t know, so we go down this long hall, and we try to jiggle on the doorknobs, and most of them were locked, and we go and jiggle on another one, and my sister and George were there. They weren’t having sex or anything, they were just talking. So John and I finally found a door that was open, so we went in. In England, they have sofas right where you can look out the window, and there was a soft sofa and we were looking out the window, and I said, “This is the most beautiful view I have ever seen,” and it was in London, and John said, “She sure is,” and he was looking straight at me. We had giggles, he would make me laugh.

He said, “I see you’re a serious girl. Do you want to talk about rock and roll, and what makes it happen?” Cause I did, I was young. And he said, “OK, let me get an ashtray,” and I’ll never forget that either, he had an ashtray because he was a chain smoker, and he started telling me the dos and don’ts --- and he didn’t know either, really. In the magazines over there, they had like every other page, the Beatles are coming, and I’d say, “What’s the Beatles,” because they weren’t big yet, only in Liverpool town. 

 JG: On that trip, you were on the same bill as the Rolling Stones …

RS: The Rolling Stones were on MY tour, and so was Eric Clapton, so were the Yardbirds, and all those. We were the headliners. All those guys love us. Eric Clapton was dying to see us, so he waited outside the hotel. So we knew all those groups for that era.

 JG: I’ve heard you had some scary moments at the Beatles’ Shea Stadium concert [in 1965].

RS: What happened was I wasn’t on their tour. The fans knew exactly what I looked like because all the papers in America had me coming out of  the Plaza where they stayed, so they knew the Ronettes and the Beatles went out together all the time. So we were leaving Shea Stadium, and it was a guy named Jerry Schatzberg and Scott Ross [a New York DJ and one of the show emcees; Schatzberg was his agent at the time], and they shouted, “There they are, the Ronettes!” And there I was. The car was rocking back. 

I’ll tell you, it was the scariest moment of my life. That car. And it was more than a hundred kids around the car. Thank God it was a Bentley. That’s what saved us. Can you imagine? Because it was a Bentley it was so heavy. We were lucky. We inched along, and I’m telling Jerry, you’ve gotta move the car. You’ve gotta move. I’ll never forget. I was so scared we were gonna die. So he inched it along and inched it along, and then you’d see those kids just flopping off. You didn’t want to hurt the kids. But you didn’t want your name in the paper, singer murdered or killed trying to get away from the Beatles concert. 

JG: Did you stay in touch with the Beatles after they broke up? 

RS: I saw John in New York, walking down the street with May Pang, I was with Buddha Records, and I hear this voice “Ronnie, Ronnie,” and it was May Pang. And she said, “John Lennon’s upstairs, and he would die to see you. Come on up.” I went up and John was on a top bunk, and he was ragged, he looked like he had been on drugs and had been drinking, and he had a beard that was like Santa Claus, only darker and stuff. He was such a mess, and it just hurt my heart because he was such a great writer and great everything. 

And the next time I saw him, I heard a voice, and he said, “Ronnie,” he called me “Ronnie Ronette, Ronnie Ronette,” and I turned around, and John was dressed immaculately, no beard. He hadn’t drank or taken drugs for months. He looked great. And I was so happy.

He wanted to help me. And I was with [producer] Jimmy Iovine at the time, he wasn’t big then but he’s huge now, and John said, “Jimmy, set it up at the Hit Factory, and I’ll be there.” He wanted to help me. He loved my voice, and he knew I wasn’t getting anywhere with it, but we won’t talk about that part, he knew, and I knew he knew. So he introduced me to Jimmy Iovine, who introduced me to Springsteen, and that’s what got me back out there in the rock and roll world. Springsteen put me on his tour. So I have all of that, to look back for John Lennon. He got me into the recording studio, he got me onto the Springsteen tour. He knew I loved it, and he knew what took it away from me.

 JG: At one point, you recorded for Apple, with the single “Try Some, Buy Some.”

RS: I go in there, and I see this guy, his hair is so long, I can’t see his face. And I walk up, and I say, I guess this is the guy I’m supposed to go over things with, and he slowly looks up, and it’s George Harrison. And when he sees me, and when I see him, we go …. And we’re hugging and kissing. And we sit down at the piano, and we start going over this song, and it’s Try some … buy some. And I’m wondering, what is it that I’m trying to buy? It’s the most weird song for the “Be My Baby, “Walking in the Rain” girl. I said, “George, what kind of lyrics are these?” And he said, “I don’t know either, and I wrote it.”

  

 

A conversation with Beatles Fan Club secretary Freda Kelly

Freda Kelly was hired by Brian Epstein in 1962 as a secretary, and not so coincidentally to run the Beatles’ official fan club. She was a fan, a 17-year-old who spent many a lunch hour from her previous secretarial job in the Cavern Club for the Beatles’ lunchtime sessions. When Epstein made her fan club secretary, she quickly was caught up in the worldwide tidal wave that was Beatlemania.

I interviewed her in August 2012 for a Chicago Fest for Beatles Fans preview in the Chicago Sun-Times. At the time, work had begun on a documentary about her life and her years running the club, from 1962-72. The documentary, “Good Ol’ Freda,” has now been completed and was previewed at the 2013 Fest for Beatles Fans, where Freda made her second Chicago appearance. It’s a fantastic, award-worthy work, filled with smiles, laughs and some tears. At the end, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. It’ll have a limited theatrical run, as documentaries tend do, then be available on DVD in December 2013. I highly recommend it.

As usual, I gathered far more material than could be included in a newspaper story. So for those who’d like more than the three or four quotes I used in the story, here’s a transcript.

JG: It’s great to hear you’re going to be at the Chicago Fest. Have you ever been to Chicago before?

FK: No but I do have family there. I have six cousins in the Chicago area. I haven’t met three of them. I’m coming beforehand with my daughter and grandson, and I’ll have a chance to see them.

When Mark [Lapidos, the Fest for Beatles Fans proprietor] invited me to Chicago, I said I haven’t any holidays left. He said, “What do you mean? I’ll ring your boss and see if he’ll let you off.”

In New Jersey [at a February 2012 Fest, six months before her first Chicago appearance], I was really overwhelmed. Everyone was so nice to me.

JG: How did you get involved with the Beatles and the fan club?

FK: I just saw the Beatles at the Cavern and got involved with a lot of followers. I found out they had a fan club and helped a girl who ran the fan club. They [the Beatles] also lived by me, so I got to know them and they gave me lifts home and everything. And then Brian Epstein got to know me through them.

Then he decided to start his own fan club. I originally worked in the offices [as a secretary, in Epstein’s offices] and then ran the fan club afterward.

I have been involved with them since 1962, and then I stayed with them until 1972. There was no Beatles anymore, for want of a better word. And I wanted to have more children.

With me knowing them. I went to see them when Pete Best was with them, and then of course Richie [Ringo Starr] joined them. I lived and died in the Cavern in those days. I would go on my dinner hour, and whenever they were on then. I liked the lunchtime sessions more than anything. It was a lot more intimate and it wasn’t just a show, they talked to the audience, and you could shout up to them what numbers you wanted them to play, and they’d fire back at you, “We’ve already done that!” And we’d say, “Oh, come on, do it again!” We all had our own little spot in the Cavern as well. You’d sit in a certain seat or lean against a certain wall. I was always on the left hand side --- well, I tried to.

I suppose really that’s how I got to work for them, because Brian Epstein got to know me through them. We all knew he was the manager of the biggest record shop in the north of England. He’d acknowledge me and I’d acknowledge him. To me, in those days he was a lot older than me. I was only 16, 17. Until one time, they were playing and he was there, and I said hello to him. I can’t remember the exact words because it’s a long time ago. And he started talking to me and telling me he was going to start his own fan club. He had a secretary and he was looking for another one, and he knew I was a secretary. He said would I like to come along and have a chat with him, and that’s how it started. So I had to type their contracts and their wages.

We didn’t just have the Beatles on our books. We had Gerry and the Pacemakers, and Billy J. [Kramer], and the Fourmost, and Cilla [Black], and Tommy Quickly. They were in and out of the office all the time. I know it sounds wrong, but they were just ordinary people, because we all grew up together, and they went on to be massive.

JG: As a fan, did you expect the Beatles’ success? I don’t mean the magnitude, because we’d never seen anything like Beatlemania. But did you think group you knew in the clubs would be famous and make hit records?

FK: I always had faith in them. There were two groups in Liverpool. Some girls didn’t want them to be famous because they knew if they did, that was it, they’d leave the city. One of my friends was in that group. She just didn’t want to lose them, where I was in the other camp, I wanted them to be as big as Cliff Richard, which was what you thought about in those days. But nobody visiualised how big it was going to get.

JG: They do a shout out to you on their 1963 fan club record. Were you surprised? [Note: on the record, the Beatles yell, “Good Ol’ Freda,” which has become the name of the new documentary about her,]

FK: I was, because was in work at the time, and Cilla came in, and she was the one who told me. She said to me, “Have you heard the fan club record?” And I said no, and she said, “Oh, they mentioned you in it.” And I said, “Oh, no you’re joking.” And I went sick because I knew they’d probably say something funny, and they might say, Oh, we don’t like Freda, or something in joke. I was on edge waiting to see what they said. (Cilla wouldn’t tell). But then when I heard, I thought it was very nice they acknowledged me.

JG: How involved were the Beatles in the fan club?

FK: They were very involved in the fan club, especially in the beginning. I’m not just saying it because you’re on the phone. Any chance I got, especially ’63, ’64, when they were on the road a lot and they had to make records, when they were in the office, I threw photographs and autograph books at them, while they were talking they would sign, or if they were going in to see Eppy they would take a bundle of photographs to sign.

JG: What kinds of requests did you get from fans?

FK: I hadn’t experienced kids writing in saying, “Can I have their pillowcase, or “Can I have a bit of his shirt,” and I’d think. “Oh my God.” I was very close to the parents, because I’d go to the homes with the mail and help out with the fan mail. So in the end I asked, “Can I have the shirts they don’t wear anymore” or “Can I have the pillowcases?” You have to remember I was a fan as well, so I was on the same wavelength as them. I was quite young, 17 years old Although I do have a serious head, had my feet on the ground, anddid my job properly. Otherwise I wouldn’t have lasted.

JG: What was the most unusual request?

FK: They’d ask, “If Paul is coming in on Wednesday, can I come in and have a cup of tea with him?” If he was around on a Wednesday, he’s going to spend the time with his dad and his brother.

JG: Tell me about the documentary, “Good Ol’ Freda.”

FK: The video started through New Jersey [at the Fest]. I laid low for a long time. Just now Mark invited me over. Over the years people have asked me, “Why don’t you write a book?” or “Why don’t you do this or that?” And I’m the type of person that thinks, “Oh no, don’t want to do that.” I’m not being flippant or rude, but I think there are too many books on the Beatles. I’ve got it all in my head. Then when my grandson came along, somebody said, “You should let him know what you did,” and that planted the seed. You know what? I would like him to know what his grandmother did in her youth. I didn’t just work for the Beatles. I had a ball in the ’60s. The ‘60s were a really great time. I just loved the ’60s and I crammed so much into my youth. We hitched all over the country, seeing groups. I never told my parents I hitched.

JG: You have so many great memories. Is there one lasting impression of those days you’d like to share?

FK: I just wish Beatle fans got to see, to me, the real Beatles, what they were like when they played the Cavern. I know people say that was the raw Beatles, but to me, that was the Beatles. I know they’ve done so much since, all those songs they’ve written and Sergeant Pepper. To see them live in their youth was just mind-blowing. You just knew. You just had this good feeling that here is something that’s entirely different.

A conversation with Billy J. Kramer

Way back in 1964, I was a 12-year-old boy with typical 12-year-old boy interests: Sports, especially baseball; science, especially dinosaurs; and avoiding weeding the peonies. I’m still a sports guy --- I played baseball through Pony League and football in high school, and have written and edited sports for much of my newspaper career. I still read science books for fun, and have picked up on science fiction along the way.

But 1964 awakened me to music, and that has remained a passion ever since. It was the year of the British Invasion, and I was one of the first wave of U.S. Beatlemaniacs. The Beatles always were --- and are --- No. 1 with me, but I loved all the other new sounds coming from the U.K., too. The Animals, Manfred Mann, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Searchers, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones. All made it into my growing record collection.

One of my very favorites was Billy J. Kramer. I bought all three U.S. LPs by Billy & the Dakotas, and played them to the extent that even now, 49 years later, I can put them on the turntable and, as each song ends, anticipate the opening of the next. He was one of the first wave of stars to come out of Liverpool, and friend of the Beatles who had played in the same clubs, often on the same cards as them, and he was managed by Beatles manager Brian Epstein.

I recently interviewed Billy for the Chicago Sun-Times for a preview of the Aug. 9-11 Fest for Beatles Fans. It’s a preview I write nearly every year, and one of my favorite assignments. Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure to speak with many old favorites, including Gordon Waller of Peter and Gordon; Ronnie Spector and Billy Preston.

You can find this year’s Sun-Times Fest preview at http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/people/21773040-421/liverpools-billy-j-kramer-headed-to-beatles-festival.html. Newspaper space limitations being what they are, I couldn’t begin to touch on everything I’d have liked to use. So I thought it would be fun to post a longer transcript here. In it, he talks about his new album, “I Won the Fight,” as well as the old days.

By the way, I received a copy of the CD shortly after this interview, and loved it. I played twice through on the first day.

JG: Thanks for setting this up Billy. I’m looking forward to seeing you at the Fest.

BJK: I’m really looking forward to it. It’s always fun, but we had such a great time this year in New Jersey [at the February Fest for Beatles Fans]. I took my band along and played all my new songs and my old songs, and the people who came --- I was very pleased they seemed to really get off on it. It’s very hard with new material, it can go either way. It’s a worry because an artist never knows if they’ll like it or just wanted to hear the old stuff. But they were very responsive. It was great.

JG: It’s your first album to be released in the U.S. since the 1960s. What have you been doing in that time?

BJK: I was just doing shows. It’s very difficult. When Brian [Epstein] died, it was a time when he was about to form his own label. I was going to record with Brian’s label, as I was finishing with EMI. I tried to continue making records independent over the years, and I thought some of them were pretty good, but some of them were pretty lousy. But I didn’t have the big guns behind me. So it was very difficult.

It was something that I always loved to do and wanted to do. I put out singles here and there, and they never came across the ocean to America, but they were out there in England.

JG: The new album is called “I Won the Fight,” which is also one of the songs. Is there a special meaning?

BJK: I won the fight to me … It’s strange, but I started to write the song here at home one day. My idea was about people, the hillclimbers, I never saw them again. “I had a girl called Maureen, and I never ever saw her again.” And it just developed into this song “Liverpool With Love.” Then “Sunsets of Santa Fe,” I have a house in Santa Fe and the sunsets there are magnificent. I actually wrote this song in New York, which is strange, but I went in and I sort of demoed them. One thing led to another till I had a whole CD.

It’s coming up to 50 years, and I said to myself, if you’ve been in show business for 50 years and been through what I’ve been through, good and bad, you’ve definitely won the fight.

JG: Your website says you’ve written four songs on the CD. Which four?

BJK: “To Liverpool with Love,” ‘Sunsets of Santa Fe,” “I Won the Fight,” and “You Can’t Live on Memories.”

JG: In the time between your last chart hits and this CD, did you stay in show business the whole time?

BJK: I was in show business throughout that time. I continued. I had a band. I just did shows. Cabaret became a big thing in England. You’d go and play for a week in one city, then go to another city. I played in Australia and Africa and wherever people wanted me to play.

JG: With audiences demanding the old hits, did you ever feel like, “I never want to do bloody ‘Bad to Me’ ever again?

BJK: I never said that. I feel it’s an artist’s duty to the audience who came along to hear these songs to do them. I’ve done other material but I’ve always included the old songs too.

JG: Turning back the clock, when your recording career began, how much of what you were doing on stage in Liverpool made it onto those albums.

BJK: Not much. I always tell people that this is is my first album because most of the songs on the old albums, apart from the hits and the B-sides, on most of the songs I’d get the lyric sheet put in front of me and I’d sing them, and I’d never sing them again. Also, when you think back, we only did like 20 minute sets. When I started doing the cabaret and the clubs and one-night stands, I would do an hour, and in the hour I would do the A-sides, my B-sides and some things that I thought were cool.

JG: In Liverpool before fame, what kinds of things were you doing onstage?

BJK: Mostly I would do like Jerry Lee Lewis songs, Rick Nelson songs, Fats Domino songs. A lot of cover stuff, things that were being played the radio that I liked.

JG: In November 1963, you came with Brian to New York. [Billy was the first artist Epstein brought to the U.S.] What were your impressions?

BJK: My first trip over here, when I saw the New York skyline, I thought it was unbelievable, but I felt totally intimidated by New York and I wanted to get on the next plane back to England. It overwhelmed me. It was very interesting. I was amazed by the time TV was on [JG---U.K. television had limited hours at the time]. I was amazed that I could buy records at midnight. Have dinner on the 47^th floor of a skyscraper. It really blew my mind.

JG: Why did Brian bring you on the trip [which was mainly to sign contracts]? What did you do?

BJK: At first, I think Brian thought I have this clean image that may be for America. I always think that maybe people think there was something going on with Brian. John Lennon went to Spain with Brian, and everybody thought … you know, I came to America with Brian, and nobody’s ever asked me that question.

JG (laughing): No, no, I wasn’t referring to that at all.

BJK: I did some local TV, I did some radio, and stuff like that, and I saw the sights. We saw some shows. We had a great trip together.

JG: Was John the Beatle you were closest to?

BJK: Yes, I think so. John and Paul. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about John Lennon. I’d really like to write a song about him, but I find it to be very, very difficult. The first time I met John Lennon was at Aintree Institute in Liverpool and he was so nice. I was asking about his guitar, and he said, ‘Do you want to play it?’ They were just cool guys to me. I did a lot of shows with them before they were famous. The song “Do You Want to Know a Secret” [a No. 1 hit for Kramer in the U.K.] was given to me by Brian on a tape. It was John singing it on his own on an acoustic guitar. At the end, John said, “Billy, I’d like to apologize for the quality of the tape, but it’s in the quietest room in the building, and he flushed the toilet, which I thought was hilarious.

I never asked the Beatles for an autograph, and I toured with them all over the place. When I got the song “Bad to Me,” [which Kramer to No. 1 in the U.K, No. 9 in the U.S.) funny enough, I was backstage at a theater and everyone was jamming on the stage. Paul McCartney, I remember, was playing drums, and John was reading a newspaper. He said, “I’ve got a great song for you.” I said, “Are you going to play it for me?” And he said, “No, I’ll see you the next time you’re at Abbey Road.” The next session I did at Abbey Road, to tell you the truth, I wondered if he was going to show up or what. There he was at 10 o’clock at the morning, and I can always say it was an unbelievable experience to sit in a room with John Lennon and have him play “Bad to Me” to me.

Then he said, “I have another one I’d like you to listen to.” And he played “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” I said, “Can I have that one?” He laughed and said, “No, no that’s our next record.”