Original subtitles

Well, I've been wonderful on the last two takes.

Come on!

Hey!

‐ Back. And we're back.

‐ What do you remember about this? ‐ Whoo!

‐ Wha‐what do you remember about that, that moment?

‐ Writing the song... ‐ Yeah.

‐ You know, as a kind of spin‐off,

like a joke on the Chuck Berry Back in the USA.

‐ For some reason, I mean, maybe I was showing Ringo

what I thought the drumming should be.

I think, and he might've said, "Well, you do it."

He might've also said, "Well, you do it."

‐ So you played drums on this. ‐ I‐‐ Yeah.

‐ I didn't know that. ‐ Yeah, yeah.

‐ How long did you write the song

before this was recorded, would you say?

‐ It wouldn't have been that long

'cause you pretty much wrote the thing and got in the studio.

Um‐‐

In the old days, when you were doing cover songs...

‐ ...you would all learn the cover songs together,

so you were in the habit of learning a song quickly.

‐ Yeah.

‐ Anyway. ‐ That's true.

Yeah. And we, we never rehearsed. ‐ Yeah.

‐ I mean, now I rehearse quite a bit,

'cause you've got a big production as well.

But then, I remember us sort of saying,

you know, we had a day's rehearsal

and we were going to do the next day.

Everyone was like, "That's enough."

You know?

"We've done one day, what more do you want?"

‐ Before the first record, though... ‐ Yeah.

‐ ...how many hours did you play together? ‐ Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. ‐ Yeah.

‐ At least 10,000.

‐ Yeah. ‐ According to the man.

‐ When was the point where it's like,

this is different than everyone else, in terms of popularity?

‐ Okay. So we'd played in Hamburg, then we played in England,

and we got more and more popular,

and I always say, it's a good thing.

Because, you know, a lot of kids on these TV talent shows

are propelled into stardom,

and they don't know how to deal with it. ‐ Yeah.

‐ But we had this staircase so that we would play ballrooms,

then we played theaters, then we'd do a bit of television,

then we'd do a radio series, we'd do this and this and this.

So we were getting famous,

and then we'd had number‐one records,

so I think that's when we first started to think,

"We're famous. We're number one in the land."

But my thing was America.

‐ No British acts had gone to America and been successful.

They'd all come back.

So I remember taking Brian Epstein aside,

saying "Brian," I said,

"We can't go to America

"until we've got a number‐one record there.

We've got to wait."

‐ And we did.

We waited and waited.

And it didn't happen until I Want to Hold Your Hand.

‐ We were playing in Paris, when a telegram,

the old fashioned email, came through.

"Congratulations, boys.

I Want to Hold Your Hand, number one in the USA."

‐ Wow. ‐ Aah!

And that was a party night.

‐ You think it was because you loved American music so much,

or wh‐‐ is that why‐‐ ‐ Yeah!

Yeah, that's what it was. Yeah. We loved American music.

It was the blues tradition, the rock and roll tradition,

Elvis. ‐ Yeah.

‐ Everything we listened to was American.

Little Richard at the piano, banging away.

It blew our minds.

Did you ever get to meet any of those guys?

‐ Richard. We worked with Richard in Hamburg.

‐ Really? ‐ Yeah.

‐ What was that like?

‐ Incredible. ‐ Yeah.

You know, for young kids from Liverpool

to work with someone like Little Richard.

‐ It was so great.

It was a whole TV hour on its own.

You know, we'd go into his dressing room before he went on,

and just to hear his stories.

‐ See, you don't have to be the top of the bill

to climb the hill.

See, this is not, it ain't the size of the ship that make you seasick,

it's the waves in the ocean.

It ain't the man that run the fastest,

but the man that endure to the end.

So I know that if water fall on rock long enough,

it's to break it.

It was, like, evangelical or something.

Yeah.

‐ And, well, he'd gone to Australia.

Supposed to have thrown all his rings into the water

and renounced, you know, materialism or whatever. ‐ Yes.

‐ So we'd ask him, "Hey, Richard, is it true

that, you know, you threw all your rings away and all that?"

And he'd tell us all, he'd say,

"Yes, child, that's true.

I'll tell you."

And he had this beautiful way, Southern, Southern American way.

So yeah, we were massively excited to come to America

because these are the people that we loved,

and they were loving us. ‐ Yeah.

‐ This was like, yeah, we've arrived. We were famous.

Yeah.

It's a great feeling. ‐ Yeah.

‐ Of being accepted.

Is really‐‐ ‐ Yeah, exactly.

Because you think about it,

that's sort of what everyone's trying to do.

There's obviously the cool guys who went,

"I don't care," and that's great.

But, um, most people, I think most people want to be accepted.

Like, "Great job." ‐ Yeah. He's good.

‐ You go, "Thank you."

‐ Two voices the whole time, harmony the whole time.

‐ You know, we'd started off with songs which are just for the fans.

‐ Yeah.

‐ From Me To You, Love Me Do, Please Please Me,

Thank You Girl.

We were writing to our fan audience.

But then, as things went on,

we started to just write for ourselves

and figured

that the fans would listen to our extension

of what we wanted to write.

So we did, and we got into kind of more

sort of slightly different things.

This being 3/4 time.

And we used to want to do this on stage.

But it wasn't a big fan favorite.

‐ May be hard to dance to, too, because of the‐‐

‐ It would be hard to dance to. ‐ Because of the groove.

But the harmonies are great.

And the words are really good. ‐ As you say, it's very Everlys.

How impactful were the Everly Brothers on you?

Massively.

We always used to say I was Phil, John was Don.

You listen to Beatles records.

'Cause I always take the higher harmony than John.

That was us being the Everlys.

‐ You know, we were kind of proud of this one.

‐ This is a good one.

‐ We thought we were kind of, you know, getting really funky folk.

‐ Tell me about albums versus singles,

because in modern time,

when you put out an album, all your singles are on that album.

‐ Yeah. Yeah.

‐ But were you guys the first guys to do singles

that were not part of albums?

‐ We had the luxury to do that. ‐ Yeah.

‐ You know, somebody's coming in,

and they're only going to ever have one hit.

‐ Yeah.

‐ Then that had better be on the album.

‐ Yeah, yeah, yeah. ‐ You know.

But we, we were rather confident.

‐ Yeah. ‐ And then the other great thing was,

there used to be an A side and a B side, as you know.

‐ Yeah.

‐ The B side earns just as much money as the A side,

so we were trying to write good A sides, good B sides.

‐ Yeah.

‐ I remember Phil Spector saying to us,

"You throw away all your songs.

"On a, on a, on a record,

you're putting two good songs on there."

He said you should put the hit,

and then the other side, just like take the vocal off,

and call it sing‐along‐with

or something. ‐ And sell it twice.

‐ Sell it twice. And we said, "No, Phil.

We can't do that." So, because you know why?

Because we were recently record buyers.

‐ Yeah.

‐ And we would have felt so cheated

if we'd have bought that record.

‐ Was it typically an album a year?

‐ It was typically, it was like an album a year,

and four singles a year.

‐ An album plus four additional singles?

‐ Yeah.

‐ The songs were varied on each album,

and then every album was varied from the other.

‐ Yeah.

It was like.

And the pace you were working at‐‐

‐ Yeah.

‐ It'd be like, "Go down, do the solo, then come on."

"Yeah, okay."

Run down...

Done, great.

‐ Next. ‐ Yeah. Next.

‐ Yeah, yeah, yeah. ‐ You know.

‐ Amazing.

‐ I remember, with And I Love Her. ‐ Yeah.

‐ I brought it in, and it was just, I had the chords.

And then George Martin said,

"It would be nice if we could have a little intro."

‐ And George Harrison just went‐‐

Yeah.

Yeah. Integral.

‐ Now, see and that‐‐

‐ You know, I couldn't imagine this song without that.

‐ Yeah. ‐ Yeah.

‐ It was good, you know.

‐ Yeah.

‐ Ooh. Switches.

George, now he does this part, instead of...

‐ That was not a preplanned‐‐

‐ No.

But he knew the chords, and that was enough

so he could transpose stuff.

Once we'd started to write,

we discovered other people who were writing.

‐ This was like a,

like a sort of disease that spread, a good disease.

‐ Yeah, everyone could see‐‐

‐ Of songwriting, everyone sort of started‐‐

‐ "He's doing it, I'll try it."

‐ Yeah.

At one point quite early days,

we were supporting Roy Orbison.

‐ I think he'd always written his stuff,

but a very favorite memory of mine is,

we were on the tour with Roy,

and we stopped off somewhere for a cup of tea.

Roy stayed on the bus.

And I remember John and I coming back on the bus afterwards

and there, sitting at the back of the bus with his guitar...

is Roy.

‐ And you learned things from people like that.

Yeah.

‐ I'd do a little songwriting class,

in my old school up in Liverpool.

And one of the things I nearly always point out

to the students

is that it's good to have an end to a song

because you've got to let the audience know it's finished.

When we're on tour,

every song of Roy's got a big end.

And always like a great big note.

And he stopped. Then it's like‐‐

There's nowhere else to go. You've got to clap there.

‐ Yeah.

‐ So I said, well, yeah, I don't want you to do that.

But think about letting the audience know you've finished.

So we'd pick up little tricks like that off, off Roy.

‐ Remember any other moments where you saw something

and you just, like, never saw anything like it

or felt anything like it before?

‐ Kinks.

I mean, we loved their first hit.

You Really Got Me, and the guitar riff. ‐ Great riff too.

They supported us. We were in Brighton.

We were due to come on second half,

and they did the first half.

We all kind of came out, sort of hid a bit,

so we could watch them, you know.

Good little song.

‐ Yeah.

Seeing Dylan at the Albert Hall was very special.

Because his first‐‐ ‐ That was when it was still acoustic‐‐

‐ His first half was acoustic,

and then the band came on for his electric.

All the folkies kind of booed him.

They thought he's gone over to the other side.

He's sold out to the enemy, you know.

But we loved it.

‐ Then, you know, we were talking about Jimi Hendrix.

‐ Yeah. Where did you see him play?

‐ We used to go to this club called the Bag O' Nails,

which is where I would eventually meet Linda.

But it was our regular hangout.

Because we were in groups, you never got to go to the pub.

When you stopped working, the pubs are closed,

so you had to get, like, a drink and maybe something to eat.

And this club, Bag O' Nails, was that.

So I went down there,

and you would just sit in an alcove

and you'd mainly listen to records.

The live bands normally weren't that good.

Anyway, one night, there was hardly anyone in the club,

and I'm there late with a couple of friends.

And you hear, to me, some sort of exciting sound,

an electric guitar plugging in.

If it's all live‐‐

Yeah.

‐ That's‐‐ Whoa!

It's a little bit too loud, but it's very cool.

He plugged it in.

That got our attention and he goes‐‐

And that was another kind of,

wow,

electric moment.

And even though there's hardly anyone in the club,

he played this great set, teeth and the whole thing.

I think that was like on a Friday night.

And then he played again, same club on the Tuesday.

Well, it was packed.

‐ Just the word of mouth from how great Friday‐‐

‐ Word around London was you've got to see this guy.

‐ Wow.

So we all went, I went back to check him out again.

‐ Great.

‐ And it was Pete Townshend in the audience, Eric Clapton.

Word had got around.

It was very exciting, but we're kids, living it.

What's great is, as time goes by, th‐they become legends.

‐ Yeah.

‐ It was a great camaraderie, you know,

and it was a great generation.

‐ Yeah.

‐ And it wasn't just us, it was artists as well.

So you'd be hanging with artists and looking at a lot of art,

and so I had a few friends who were of that ilk

and would turn me on to, like, cool books

and cool music.

It wouldn't necessarily find its way onto a record,

but it influenced your thinking.

Yeah. This is an instrument they had lying around EMI,

called a Lowrey organ.

‐ Who played this? ‐ Me.

‐ This is all on two track.

‐ It's a lot of information for two, two tracks, isn't it?

‐ I think that's me making 'em all...

‐ High‐‐ The high harmony. ‐ Yeah.

‐ Rick this is why we don't go into tapes.

‐ That's beautiful.

It's beautiful. ‐ Aaaah!

Yeah.

You know the story. Everyone thought it was LSD.

Lucy, Sky, Diamond.

But it was actually his son, Julian, Julian Lennon,

who'd been at school and had brought back

a little drawing of his school friend, Lucy.

He'd drawn stars around her.

And so he called them diamonds, and this was Lucy,

and because she was sort of floating,

she was Lucy in the sky with diamonds.

He said, "I think it's a good title for a song."

‐ Yeah.

‐ And we were big Lewis Carroll fans,

Alice in Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking Glass.

And, that was another point of contact for me and John,

these lyrics, you know, the kaleidoscope eyes.

It's sort of straight out of Alice,

almost the Cheshire cat.

It was, you know, vanishes,

the caterpillar smoking his big hookah.

‐ Yeah.

‐ And it was a head job, you know, it was like‐‐ ‐ Yeah.

‐ The truth is, everyone was getting stoned.

‐ Yeah.

‐ And it was intentionally a sort of fun album

for the... high times.

Yeah. It worked.

‐ It did, yeah.

‐ Tell me about first time in India.

‐ So we were in the middle of sort of the drug culture

and we were pretty wasted, you know, pretty burned out.

We'd seen Maharishi when we were kids

on sort of black and white television.

And he giggles, and we're going, you know,

just kids in Liverpool, we're going, "Love this guy."

And then years later, we did a little course in England,

and then we ended up going out to India.

Why we were doing it is because we needed it.

Yeah.

It's all like, "My God," we were working a lot,

and recording a lot.

So... going there was a great relief, you know.

So yeah, we went out and stayed at this place in Rishikesh,

which are now apparently,

it's The Beatles meditation camp.

It's a little bit rundown. I met someone who'd been there.

But it was a very gentle time, it was a very beautiful time.

And we'd all brought our guitars,

so we were all writing.

I wrote Ob‐La‐Di, Ob‐La‐Da there,

which is not really spiritual.

It was just a song.

And John wrote this.

‐ So is this like you imagined when John played it for you first‐‐

‐ Yeah. ‐ It was like this?

‐ Pretty much, yeah.

It wasn't double tracked, of course, but I mean,

just the simple version of this, yeah.

There was a girl there who was called Prudence Farrow,

and she was Mia Farrow's sister.

The word got out that she was in her chalet

and wouldn't come out.

So we all sort of wanted to go over.

And John was playing and singing this to her.

‐ Yeah. ‐ Yeah.

‐ It's that juxtaposition thing, again.

It's really a real folk song.

‐ That's not.

‐ No, this is not folky.

Interesting tone.

‐ Wow. Really percussive, like‐‐

‐ With the treble. ‐ Yeah.

I liked to do that.

You know, we'd use a pick, then you get that very treble end,

but then you get the bass as well.

‐ Yeah.

‐ It's long.

‐ Yeah. ‐ How'd that happen?

‐ I think we were like, you know, that was like a challenge.

‐ Yeah. See who can‐‐

‐ Who can hold the note that long.

‐ Wow, that's long.

‐ Breathe in.

Yeah. ‐ Incredible.

‐ Yeah, it was just, you know, it's like,

you wanted it to go right through.

We could have stopped it halfway. ‐ Yeah, yeah, yeah.

‐ Taken a breath. ‐ Yeah.

‐ But it was like, it's like mischief.

"No, you know, let's try and see if we can hold it."

So it was like...

‐ You know.

‐ And that would have been you, John, and George?

‐ Yeah, I think so. ‐ Singing together, probably?

‐ Yeah. ‐ Typically.

‐ Yeah. That high note's me.

‐ Yeah. ‐ Yeah.

No, I remember that. We would do that.

It would be like, "It's so long, sorry."

"Yeah. But you can do it. We can do it."

"No, we can't. It's too long." ‐ Yeah, yeah.

‐ "Let's try it." ‐ Yeah, yeah.

‐ You know, and it‐‐ we‐‐

You were playing around. Yeah, it's fun, you know.

So you're pushing yourself.

It was great.

I, I say to people, you know, who are into meditation,

I was very lucky 'cause I got my mantra off Maharishi himself.

‐ Directly.

‐ So I feel kind of privileged, you know... ‐ Yes.

‐ ...that we were just there, at that time.

He basically said, "I'm going to give you a mantra."

‐ "These are ancient words,

"and why I would give you these words

"is they've been tried and tested.

"So I'll give you your word.

"And I would like you to just repeat it back to me.

"And, if it's right, I'll say yes,

and you don't ever say it again."

So he told me, and I repeated it back,

and that was it. ‐ Yeah.

‐ I used that mantra, and we continued,

and, um, it was good.

‐ I learned when I was 14 based on... Beatles meditated,

so I've got to learn that.

So I'm, I'm, I'm there.

I'm right‐‐ I'm with you.

And it changed my life only for the better.

‐ Yeah. ‐ A million percent.

‐ Well, I love that about The Beatles.

‐ Yeah.

‐ A lot of our influences were, like, really good.

‐ Yeah.

‐ You know, sort of spiritual meditation,

this kind of thing,

and, you know, so I think we laid out a few paths for people to follow.

And it has, I think it's had a good effect on the world, you know.

‐ Absolutely.

‐ But you're looking back on it, it's a great blessing

that people picked up on it

and it actually helped them in their lives,

and that's a great thing.

Goodnight, ladies and gentlemen.