50 years later: Is love all you need?

1967, the Summer of Love: LSD, pot, psychedelic music, hippies, be-ins and free love. It was the visible crest of an underground movement that had been building for some time. Posters for a Love Pageant Rally in October 1966 called for participants to “Bring the color gold... Bring photos of personal saints and gurus and heroes of the underground... Bring children... Flowers... Flutes... Drums... Feathers... Bands... Beads... Banners, flags, incense, chimes, gongs, cymbals, symbols, costumes, joy." By January the first Be-In was held in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, the apparent epicentre of hippiedom. On 13th May, 1967, Scott MacKenzie released his huge hit San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair). Selling some seven million copies, he set the tone for the coming summer. And then on 1st June, the Beatles unleashed Sgt. Pepper on an unsuspecting world.

We loved it. We were stunned by the aural experiment. We were yet to hear of Pepperland--that was to come in 1968's movie, Yellow Submarine, but Sgt Pepper took us there, albeit through a haze of cannabis. The Beatles, meanwhile, had continued recording songs in the key of Pepper. Baby You're a Rich Man, Hello Goodbye, Magical Mystery Tour and, of course, All You Need Is Love, which was to become the anthem of the summer.

But looking back from the 21st century, is it as meaningful and as relevant as it seemed then? Let's look its history.

The lads had been asked to contribute a positive song to Our World, the world's first satellite link-up show. It was broadcast 50 years ago today, June 25, 1967, live around the globe with an estimated audience of 400 million. Paul had apparently offered Your Mother Should Know, while some suggest he also delivered Hello, Goodbye. Did John write All You Need Is Love specially for the broadcast? George Martin and Ringo seem to think he did, while Paul maintains the song was already kicking around. It matters not, for John’s contribution, which further explored the themes of The Word from Rubber Soul, was chosen. With a simple, repetitive chorus encapsulating the mood of the counter-culture, it was the perfect sing-a-long hit for an international broadcast, a message and vocabulary that would cross borders and languages.



All You Need Is Love was released two weeks after the broadcast and went to number one around the world. Rolling Stone magazine places it at 370 in its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and at 21 in its list of 100 Greatest Beatles Songs.  While I agree it's a fine song, I can't help feeling Rolling Stone is being overly-generous.

Lyrically it's naive. The message is pure and true, but it's hardly a manifesto. It's a slogan, and the first of John's slogan songs like Give Peace a Chance and Power to the People. It's also the first of his political songs, superficial and passive compared to his call to action in Revolution a year later. When John offered the song to the Beatles, it's reported George Martin said to Paul, "Well, it's certainly repetitive." Subtle, George.

For a fun song about love, it's actually limiting rather than empowering. Even the opening lines "There's nothing you can do that can't be done/nothing you can sing that can't be sung" can be read as an instruction to know your place and not push boundaries. And then we get into the quasi-hippie gobbledygook. "Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time," which sounds dangerously close to the modern "finding yourself" self-help mantra. There's also a touch of fate and predestination thrown in with "nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be."  Deep ideas or shallow gibberish? A series of meaningless mantras thrown together because they sound philosophical? Read the lyrics and try to make sense of them.

What's that, John? It's easy?

Paul certainly didn't think so. In Many Years From Now, he says, "The chorus 'All you need is love' is simple, but the verse is quite complex. In fact, I never really understood it."

Of course Paul, the movement you need is on your shoulder.

Don't get me wrong. It's a great song. It captures the hope of the sixties. You don't need to understand it all. Just sit back and let the vibe wash over you, a bit like watching a David Lynch film but with flowers, bright colours and acid. It is a good message, and one we still need to learn. John, of course, never lived up to it. He pretty much abandoned Julian, treated Cynthia badly, and despite being with Yoko, continued his affairs. The glow of pot darkened as he delved into heroin, and within two years he was singing about his pain in Cold Turkey. I have no doubt John truly believed in his message of love, but couldn't effect it. All this only goes to show he was not the demi-god the world thought he was, but rather a human, imperfect and broken. It was all a dream and according to John, by the seventies, the dream is over. In his final interview in 1980, John said, "Maybe in the sixties we were naive and like children, and later everyone went back to their rooms and said, "We didn't get a wonderful world of flowers and peace." … Crying for it wasn't enough. The thing the sixties did was show us the possibility and the responsibility we all had."

Although well received at the time, the broadcast is dull and dated. While Canada showed a rancher with a herd of cattle and Australia included a segment on trams leaving their depot, London broadcast the Beatles live from Abbey Road studios. It was filmed in black-and-white, but following the previous segments it seemed as bright and shiny as if it had been in colour. The Beatles' segment alone has ensured Our World has remained in the public consciousness for fifty years.

 
In psychedelic garb and surrounded by flowers, John, Paul, George and Ringo sat on thrones with their subjects at their feet, including Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones and Keith Moon. John was nervous and chewed gum throughout. George Martin and Geoff Emerick were stressed, fearing a technical hitch, and when the broadcast commenced 40 seconds earlier than expected, they had to scramble to hide their scotch.

Peering through the rose-tinted glasses of time, it's easy to be nostalgic about 1967--the music, the fashion, the love, those halcyon summer days--but it wasn't as rosy as we remember. The Vietnam War was at its height, there were as many bad trips as good, not every hit was groovy, and San Francisco was unprepared and unwilling to assist the tens of thousands of invading dropouts and runaways. George visited Haight-Ashbury with Derek Taylor in August 1967, expecting it "to be special, a creative and artistic place, filled with beautiful people, but it was horrible - full of ghastly drop-outs, bums and spotty youths, all out of their brains."

During the sixties, many credited the Beatles with leading the cultural revolution. In hindsight it’s easier to recognise that although they were highly visible in the vanguard, they weren’t the leaders as such. They were right there, though, in the thick of popular culture and they quickly picked up on new trends, themes, ideas and movements which they extended and popularised, ignoring boundaries as they went. And it was indeed a movement, but we know that not everyone was feeling the love. As early as December 1966, Buffalo Springfield had released For What it's Worth in response to curfew riots on Sunset Strip. In 1968 the Beatles and the Stones recorded songs on a similar theme. There was a brief moment of resurgent hope as Woodstock provided a second, false dawn but that too died a few months later as the Stones played Under My Thumb at Altamont. Personally, the Beatles had trouble with loving each other. While recording the White Album they weren't getting along. Ringo quit, the sessions were strained and by 1969 the four could barely stand being in the same room together. To quote singer Larry Norman, "The Beatles said, All you need is love and then they broke up." 

We remember the dream, the hope, the bright colours of the Summer of Love, and we are better for having it in our collective memories. And all we still need is love, but as John suggested, love is not just lying around in Haight-Ashbury waiting to be harvested. We have to take responsibility and put it into action.

So where does this leave us with the lyrics?

The Grant Study, which tracked Harvard undergraduates over 80 years in order to determine which factors brought happiness, has summarised its findings as "Happiness is love."

It seems it really is all you need.

Stars on 45

In the late 70s, like many teenagers, I experimented. Unlike others, my experiments were sonic and utilised Beatles records.

I’d saved up my money for months, every penny I earned from my part time job, in order to purchase the blue box of Beatles vinyl albums. And I played those discs non-stop. Experimenting, I used my dad’s reel-to-reel to record and play the introduction to Come Together at half speed (completely awesome, by the way), I played tracks backwards, just to hear what they sounded like (including Revolution 9 and "Turn Me On Dead Man"), and I plugged the turntable into his brand new cassette deck to create my own Beatles medley. Almost forty years later I can no longer remember the reasons I had for doing this, but I selected songs which had a similar tempo, and with many false starts and a fast finger on the pause button, I finally created a track I was happy with.

A year or so later, a friend who was a part time DJ, played a track to me. Because it included some Beatles, he figured I might like it. It was a dance medley. A bunch of songs spliced together with some Beatles thrown in. And, I was quick to point out to him, a solo Ringo number. Entitled Let’s Do It in the 80s Great Hits, and credited to an artist named Passion, it was originally compiled by a Montreal DJ to play at clubs. I don’t think I ever heard it again until last year when I went hunting for it.

Someone else who heard it around that time was a Dutch music publisher. As he held copyright for one of the tracks, Venus, the hit song by Shocking Blue, he realised it was a pirate release that used snippets of official recordings. The track had gained some popularity in dance clubs and so he saw the potential in creating his own, legitimate version.

Originally released in late 1979, the result was Stars on 45, which jammed some old pop standards together before delving into the Beatles back catalogue. Produced by Jaap Eggermont, who had been a member of an early incarnation of Golden Earring, it was an incredible feat in the days of analogue recording. Snippets of songs performed by some very talented sound-alikes, all recorded independently, before being compiled against a drum track which provided a solid dance beat. Radio DJs started playing only the Beatles section, and so new edits were made. A second single was released, which included only two non-Beatle tracks. It took more than a year, but by 1981 the single hit the charts around the world. Finally an album was released. Titled Stars on Long Play, the medley was now almost 16 minutes long and consisted of only Beatle material. (The North American cover is reproduced below)

As a teen it took me a little while to determine whether they’d used actual Beatles recordings or not. To immature ears, it certainly sounded authentic. Even now it’s an excellent facsimile. (On a similar note, check out what they did with The Rolling Stones.)

Capitol records responded with all the speed and class for which it’s renowned. For several years they’d been rehashing Beatles material in poorly conceived, themed compilations, such as Love Songs, Rock and Roll, and Ballads, mostly with awful artwork and little input from the Beatles camp. The executives behind the Rock and Roll album, for example, turned down John Lennon’s offer to design the artwork after he complained about the 1950s imagery Capitol used. They also rejected George Martin’s remasters from the master tapes, citing the desire to use original versions no matter how inferior they sounded. And so in March 1982, Capitol released another compilation, Reel Music, featuring songs The Beatles had used in their films. This is an album that screams the label's intention to milk the Beatles cash cow for all it was worth.

And in the spirit of making money following the success of Stars on 45, Capitol edited seven songs (Magical Mystery Tour, All You Need Is Love, You've Got to Hide Your Love Away, I Should Have Known Better, A Hard Day's Night, Ticket to Ride and Get Back) to create a Movie Medley single. The single reached number 12 on the American charts. In the UK, Parlophone initially refused to release it as they considered it tawdry. Two months later they conceded defeat and released it anyway as they could no longer ignore local demand for imports. It stalled at number 10 on the British music charts. It remains the only Beatles single never released on CD. And I can see why. 

It's awful.

If I had a guilty pleasure, then it might be listening to Stars on Long Play, the extended Beatles medley. I was a teenager when I first bought it, listening to a variety of music. New wave, rock, some disco and, of course, my beloved Beatles. This track tied some of those elements together, and I enjoyed it immensely. I appreciated what they’d done with the music. I’m not a purist who believes the Beatles are so sacred their music can’t be touched. There are some cover versions I really like, many I detest.

More recently, I haven’t particularly enjoyed the Beatle songs as performed by the cast of the TV series, Glee. I’m not a fan of the show nor its musical interpretations, but as a school teacher I heard some kids talking about some of those songs shortly after those episodes. And so I recognise the show’s role in re-introducing bands like the Beatles to modern teenagers. 

And whether you love or hate it, that’s exactly what Stars on 45 did for my generation.

Teenage Adventures In Bootlegs

I was a teenager when I held my first foray into the world of bootlegs. An older friend played me a couple of his latest acquisitions, a pair of titles by The Rolling Stones. They were raw, rough, and fun to listen to. I loved the primitive artwork, and I suspect, I loved the knowledge they were illicit. I think I was secretly thrilled to be part of the underground, that none of my other friends knew these records existed. I felt older, more into music than them. Whatever the reasons, it was enough. I was hooked.

So it wasn't long before I went in search of bootlegs by my beloved Beatles.

In hindsight I'm sure they were around, but for a naive boy like me they weren't particularly visible. If I'd been a little older, a little more 'street-smart', I'd have probably found a stack in a tiny record shop in the suburbs where the counter-culture held sway. At the time, however, I only knew of one shop which sold them, the shop where my friend had scored his Stones albums.

The guy behind the counter was friendly, even chatty, until I mentioned I was looking for a particular title. His manner changed instantly. He had never heard of that disc, never had them in the store, didn't know what I was talking about, and thanks for calling. I never even mentioned the 'B' word.

A short time later I stumbled across my first Beatles bootleg at a market. Live In Anytown was a bizarre mash of songs from several different shows across different years. Even the producers were vague about the source with this note in the credits. "There are rumers (sic) that part of this album was recorded at the very famous Smithsville concert, but we asked both Mr W. Z. Ardo and Dr. Terrence and they said that was definitely not so, but perhaps a couple of the tracks might be from Horsesneck and if that’s the case Big D. would say that’s not very kosher."

As an album I found it less than satisfying and never played it all that much.

File Under: Beatles was my next vinyl bootleg. A mix of  Get Back outtakes, unreleased demos and tracks lifted from The Boardroom Tape, I enjoyed this one a lot more. Sure, it was patchy and some songs were incomplete, but the audio was pretty good. This was the first time I heard tracks like Come and Get It, Goodbye and Leave My Kitten Alone. For a short time I played this disc a lot. I mean, I had new Beatles songs.

But the love affair didn't last. It's an album I listened to from time to time, but for some reason I didn't find it anywhere near as satisfying as those early Stones bootlegs I had. I'm afraid they still got more playtime, even though I only had cassette tape copies.  I figured vinyl bootleg was a medium that suited the jagged edges of the live Rolling Stones. Plus the covers on Stones bootlegs were funnier and had more interesting artwork than the Beatles covers.

Skip forward to the late 80s and circumstances had brought me to Japan to live for a few years. One day while out walking, I wandered into a discount store. Surrounded by piles of cheap, brightly colored plastic crap-o-ware, and  jammed into a rack of budget label discs of oldies and crooners and such, I discovered Beatles On The BBC. I played that thing to death. It was a two disc package, well presented, good selections and great sound quality. Finally I had a Beatles bootleg I could listen to repeatedly. And it still stands up, even against the more recent official Apple products.

Ah Shinjuku. Bootleg central of Tokyo. And for the years I lived in Japan, Tokyo was bootleg central of the world. Shop after shop crammed with titles you could only imagine. We were spoiled for choice in those days. But shortly before I discovered this district, I experienced a defining moment in my life.

I bought Ultra Rare Trax 1 and 2.

I have vivid memories of the store, which ironically wasn't a bootleg specialist. The discs were reasonably cheap and I was concerned I was being ripped off. I needn't have worried. The moment I got them home and hit the play button I was completely blown away. Beatles outtakes in studio quality. Very different versions of songs I was oh so familiar with. The first take of I'm Looking Through You, stripped back and stunning in its simplicity. Take 2 of Can't Buy Me Love with the backing vocals. Even hearing That Means A Lot and How Do You Do It? in good quality.

I was in heaven.

And these are discs I still listen to from time to time. They're certainly more listenable than the official Anthology albums. They hold up well over more recent bootlegs. And I guess I recall them like my first love, a warm nostalgic memory of the halcyon spring afternoon when I first heard them.

It didn't take me long before I possessed all six volumes of Ultra Rare Trax issued by The Swingin' Pig. (I even owned the extra two volumes tacked on by another label) They varied in quality, had some highlights, but never were as amazing as these first two discs.

I remember being amazed at the idea that someone had somehow nicked these tapes from the studio. These days I know more about the source of this material, although there still seems to be some dispute as to whether it was through John Barrett or Roger Scott. A lot more material has emerged from these tapes. And with more recent releases like Rockband extractions and OOPS remixes which give us an insight into the recording process, we have lots of great stuff out there. So much. Too much, in fact. I feel overloaded at times, and I think we can get a bit blase about what we have access to.

Recently I played all these discs, just to see what it was that kindled my passion for Beatles bootlegs. And boom, I was there again. A teenage boy in his bedroom listening to Mick Jagger snarl his way through a 1978 setlist.

The flame took. And as I progressed through my other discs, it flared. I fell in love with The Beatles yet again.