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details. Welcome

0:36

to Nothing Is Real, a podcast about the Beatles. Everybody

0:38

thinks they know the Beatles, but how

0:41

much do we really know? My name

0:43

is Jason Carty. My

0:54

name is Steven Cockroft. And

0:56

we're live on tape from Lapland

0:58

because it's Christmas Day. Yes, we're

1:00

sitting in our log cabin. It's

1:03

live. We're doing this live on Christmas Day

1:05

for you guys. And it's a

1:07

it's a beautiful snowy day. And we've thrown

1:09

a couple of Philip Normans on the fire.

1:12

That's all very, very relaxing. Having a having

1:14

a good Christmas, Steven? It's

1:16

very relaxed. I don't know about your chestnuts, but

1:18

mine are roasting. I can see

1:20

that you've got your if you've exposed your

1:22

chestnuts to the fire. And that's what it's all about.

1:25

Really just relaxing. And this unbelievably is

1:27

our fifth annual review. Our first one was

1:29

in 2019. This is number five. And once

1:31

again, I'm going to ask the question, was

1:34

it a good year to be a Beatles

1:36

fan? It's always a good year to be

1:38

a Beatles fan. And that's always the correct

1:40

answer. But this year in particular was a very different year

1:42

to be a Beatles fan. And we'll get to it. We

1:45

will get to it. But

1:47

if you haven't heard our review episodes before, our

1:49

plan is to generally walk through

1:51

what the fab four and all peripheral

1:54

fab four rights have been doing for 2023 and see what we

1:56

all think. I

2:00

think it was a good year. We're certainly in a

2:02

very different place than we were 12 months ago And

2:05

things have happened that we didn't think were gonna happen.

2:07

This is very true. This is very true Let's

2:10

start with some of the low-hanging fruit, which

2:12

is Mr. George Harrison

2:14

didn't really he didn't really have

2:16

a very impressive 2023 what? Oh,

2:22

I'm sorry, you were just excited that

2:24

his catalog landed on Atmoff in

2:26

streaming services That's all that's all you've been listening

2:28

to all you that's all I've been listening to

2:30

is because I'm the Atmos guy I don't

2:33

know anyone with an Atmos system including

2:35

myself I would like one, but I

2:37

still haven't delved into the magical world

2:39

of Atmos. I have a 5.1 system

2:43

And I don't know Whether if

2:46

I just buy another two speakers and connect them

2:48

to the additional speaker Connections at the

2:50

back of the receiver it works or not If

2:53

someone would like to send me a pair

2:55

of up firing speakers, I'm prepared

2:57

to to give it a go But

2:59

well is your is your is

3:01

your it depends whether your decoder is actually an

3:04

Atmos decoder or it's just sending some of the

3:06

5.1 channels just onto extra channels. That's not true that

3:08

much I think that's I won't

3:11

have true that most and I'm quite frankly not

3:13

prepared to spend what it must be 50

3:15

or 60 finds to buy an Atmos I'm

3:18

guessing at least 50. No,

3:20

it's it's a lot more. It's quite a significant

3:22

day well, depending on which way you want to

3:24

go and the thing with that moss is a

3:28

Wide range of things seem to be atmos

3:30

these days So a pair of beats flex

3:32

headphones will play an Atmos, but that's not

3:35

multi-channel Atmos And yeah, you

3:37

know a laptop will play an Atmos, but that's

3:39

not atmos for that kind of big room atmos

3:41

things Yeah, you need a I think

3:44

7.4 point one or something. My prediction

3:46

for 2024 is that I will not

3:49

be investing in an Atmos decoder

3:53

Yeah, and as you like to say think of the

3:55

children and I don't know if Atmos came into the house

3:57

Just like oh my god. How many speakers can I get

3:59

this King Crimson? and other measures. I

4:02

think there'd be the local council would get

4:04

involved. Isn't Atmos the new 5G and it's

4:06

gonna kind of fry all our brains and

4:08

make us vote for Donald Trump? I mean,

4:11

I'm not prepared

4:13

to take that risk. Well

4:15

no, don't want to take

4:17

any risk that anyone might vote for Trump. Yeah,

4:19

I can also confidently predict in 2024 I

4:22

shall not be voting for Donald Trump. That's

4:28

safe to say. Is that

4:31

your inner monologue talking? Yeah,

4:37

George hasn't really done much. George's catalogue

4:39

returned to the Dark Horse label and

4:42

they put it all out on Atmos back in

4:46

February. But there's been no box set,

4:48

there's been no living in the material

4:50

world, multi-CD physical Atmos collection. There

4:53

was just a Ravi Shankar Family and Friends

4:55

album reissued, which is a good album, not

4:57

knocking it. And an

5:00

Apple commercial. And an

5:02

Apple commercial. Yes, let's talk about the Apple

5:04

commercials because I'm generally I'm against

5:06

commercials. I'm against, well, I'm against

5:09

commercials. Generally, this terrible consumer

5:11

society in which we live in, as Paul

5:13

would say. That's why you've given it

5:15

all up. You're a lot of people don't know you live in a commune,

5:17

Stephen. I do. I have no things.

5:19

I have no material possessions whatsoever. Imagine

5:22

no material possessions. Imagine no material

5:24

possessions. But yeah,

5:27

I thought I thought this I liked. I liked this

5:29

little charming. It was a

5:31

charming little video. And no,

5:33

it didn't make me want to go and buy Apple

5:35

stuff. But I thought it was very

5:37

well done and it fit the song. And it was

5:39

an interesting use of the song and

5:41

an interesting work. Yes,

5:44

it's kind of an amalgam hybrid of the new and

5:46

old mixes of the song. And if you haven't seen

5:48

it, it's this. I haven't seen

5:50

it on television. I've just seen it online.

5:52

So I think it was just like a

5:54

promotional thing on the Apple website. So four

5:56

minute cartoon, very nicely animated and it chooses

5:58

George's isn't it a pity. And

6:00

we've touched upon this before, my feelings have kind

6:03

of changed over the years from the very puritanical,

6:05

no music should ever be in ads to the

6:07

fact of, well, you know,

6:09

maybe there's going to be one or two extra

6:11

George fans as a result of the civil commercial,

6:13

it doesn't matter, nothing matters anymore. That's since you

6:16

were paid $100 to advertise

6:18

that Canadian chaps. Video show.

6:20

Your attitude changed entirely. Did

6:24

that ad ever go anywhere? Yeah.

6:28

Yeah, I imagine he's playing

6:30

nothing but King Crimson to Canadians

6:32

in Saskatoon. The

6:35

big George Harrison album that came out in 2023 was,

6:37

of course, the first Splinter album. Go

6:39

on. It was released for Record Store Day.

6:42

This has been unavailable on vinyl. It came out

6:44

in a beautiful pressing for

6:46

Record Store Day. Splinter

6:48

were the first group

6:51

signed to the Dark Horse

6:53

label. Originally I was going to say

6:56

invented, but originally sort of invented, discovered

6:59

by Mal Evans, as you can

7:01

read about in the Mal Evans book. It's a very

7:03

good album. And I say it's a George Harrison album

7:05

because he spent more time on that than he did

7:07

on Dark Horse. And it

7:09

shows. It's very

7:12

good. I bulked at the double

7:15

Ravi Shankar live vinyl that came out

7:17

for Record Store Day on Dark Horse.

7:20

But I'm keeping an eye on in my local record store.

7:23

And when it hits the appropriate level,

7:25

you're going to steal it. I'm going to steal it. So

7:30

we can still hope and pray that we might

7:32

get something in 2024 living in the material world,

7:35

Dark Horse Box. I don't know. Maybe

7:37

now that it's all under the Dark Horse umbrella,

7:39

something will happen. But we're not getting any younger,

7:42

Stephen. Why aren't I? I

7:44

hope you're praying to the right people. And

7:48

it's two and a half years since the Aulding's

7:50

must pass box. So yeah,

7:52

that's George. Let's

7:55

move on to next beatle John Lennon.

7:57

Again, no box set. But we got

7:59

Lennon. Years

10:00

back on CD helped, but

10:02

I think Sean I'm counting on

10:04

Sean And then

10:06

they can hand the entire Beatles back

10:09

catalog to Sean and he can

10:11

do all the box sets and the Macarney archive I

10:14

don't argue with any of that. Yeah, no, I'm really

10:16

looking forward to that. They are the best box sets

10:18

Whenever I go back to them I'm still surprised that

10:20

there's corners of them that I haven't listened to or

10:22

that I haven't really gone into and they keep on

10:24

giving Bring it on mind

10:26

games walls and bridges double fantasy all of them all

10:29

of them Sean is the man But I'm still

10:31

not buying Bitcoin Anyway,

10:34

yeah, so I'm not going to throw away

10:36

my voting registration and not all politicians are

10:38

the same anyway, and That's

10:41

John and the next beetle I

10:43

have on my list is checks

10:45

notes Ringo Starr. He's a you're

10:47

pretty much What

10:49

you're going in reverse order

10:52

of bigness. I'm

10:54

going in reverse order of activity. Yes, I'm

10:58

Going Ringo

11:01

should be number one Should be

11:03

not a ring ringo has been doing

11:05

that thing He's been doing for the last

11:07

little while which is touring and putting out

11:09

EPs and I do not have a problem

11:11

with any of that He's done two kind

11:13

of North American jaunts. He's already announced another

11:15

one starting in May He's

11:19

put out the rewind forward EP which

11:21

has a brand new McCartney song and

11:23

performance on it I'm not complaining about

11:26

any of that. No, I

11:28

think Ringo is been all of 2023 Like

11:31

he has the last five or ten years,

11:33

which is being Ringo and Fair

11:36

play to him fair play to him fair play

11:38

is not van Morrison But I

11:41

don't know are we ever going to see him on this

11:43

side of the Atlantic again. He seems to be quite happy

11:46

getting in the van well private jet

11:48

with his mates for six weeks and traveling

11:51

around and Just calling

11:53

it a day. He can't He

11:56

can't be making a ton of money on those

11:58

tours because he posts these Instagram videos And he's

12:00

staying in very palatial and

12:02

lovely hotels with his crews.

12:05

And they seem to be travelling very comfortably. And he's

12:07

playing kind of three or four thousand seater halls. But

12:11

it's good for him if it's the fun of it. Yeah,

12:14

I think he's doing it because he just likes

12:16

being in a band and

12:19

touring. And you know, he's

12:21

happy, as you say, getting in the jet with his bags

12:24

full of broken key guitars and

12:27

moving from theatre to theatre. I think

12:29

he's not doing he doesn't have you

12:31

know me. I'm a man of no ambition

12:34

and I admire men of no ambition. Ringo

12:38

is you know, if you offered

12:40

him, I'm guessing, you know, a tour of South

12:42

America, American football stadiums, he

12:44

wouldn't thank you for it. You know, I

12:48

think he's just happy doing what he's doing. Yeah,

12:50

I think he's going to outlive us all except

12:52

Heath Richard. And

12:55

there is another thing that I read about, which I

12:57

had kind of passed me by, which is he's put

12:59

out a book in conjunction with Julian's

13:01

auction house, which is called Beats and Threads, which

13:03

is eighty dollars. Or you can

13:06

actually get a signed copy for five hundred

13:08

dollars. I thought he his days of signatures

13:10

were far behind him. Yeah,

13:14

but my days of signatures are far

13:16

behind me unless someone would pay me

13:18

five hundred dollars for a signature. I

13:21

mean, you know, man's got to live.

13:23

But yeah, this is

13:25

he's done some great videos for these

13:27

videos wearing his his red Mac, his his

13:29

his rooftop Mac again, sitting at a set

13:31

of drums and it blew my mind. Yeah.

13:34

And that was that was of course,

13:36

that's not his coat. That's Maureen's coat.

13:39

That is true. Yes. He put on

13:41

his pink Sarge Popper outfit and he

13:43

still fits, you know, it still fits.

13:45

So, yeah, great. I think I might

13:47

I might using all the podcast revenue.

13:49

I think I could probably stretch to

13:51

the dollar version. I'm not

13:53

prepared to spend it five hundred pounds for Ring.

13:55

I have Ringo signature on a book. Of

13:58

course you do. But

14:01

no material possessions? I...

14:04

But he's not selling this stuff, sure, he's not. It's

14:06

just kind of more an exhibition thing, isn't it? Or

14:08

is he selling it? Yeah, I think it's an exhibition. No,

14:12

I don't think so. I think it's an exhibition. He

14:14

lost a lot of memorabilia

14:16

in that famous fire that Chevy Chase

14:18

started, if you remember that in his

14:20

report. I do, yes. No,

14:22

I should say Chevy Chase did not burn Ringo's high

14:25

style. He just happened to be there at the time.

14:28

He has an alibi. He has an

14:30

alibi. Yeah,

14:32

but if you haven't seen these clips, they're well worth

14:35

looking at. And for him to sort of be sitting

14:37

at his drums, wearing the red mat, it's very surreal

14:40

and it's still Ringo. And yeah,

14:42

he seems to have an interesting relationship to this kind

14:45

of stuff. He's not... You

14:47

know, you often talk about, oh, I don't want to write a

14:49

book about, you know, those seven

14:51

years when I was famous. He

14:53

doesn't delve into it the same way Paul does. So

14:56

for him to be kind of neck deep in the

14:58

clothes and all the rest, yeah, it's striking. What

15:00

I want from Ringo is not a book about

15:02

his years with the Beatles. I want a book

15:05

or a documentary film made

15:07

about Ringo from 1970. That's

15:11

the period of Ringo's life I'm

15:14

interested in. There's gold there. If

15:18

they need an executive producer or, you

15:20

know, artistic advisor, I'm on board. Give

15:22

me a call, Ringo. Let's just do

15:24

a Kickstarter. We can do it. Yeah.

15:28

Yeah. I totally agree. So

15:31

let me just check my list here. We've done

15:33

George, we've done John, we've done Ringo. Paul

15:36

McCartney. He had

15:38

this very, very, very... His

15:41

year was really quiet until

15:43

about June. I didn't really see him

15:45

do anything until about June. And

15:48

all we knew was that this book was coming out, Eyes

15:50

of the Storm. And then he suddenly appears

15:52

to do all the promo for it. And it appears

15:54

that, you know, he's been away

15:56

for six months and he's back. He's

15:58

got this crazy non- beard and

16:01

he's telling us that the Beatles have a new single

16:03

and all hell breaks loose and

16:05

at the time I was kind of thinking

16:07

you know Paul you've done it again all

16:09

the eyes of the world are back on

16:11

Paul McCartney but he's been the

16:14

last six months he's just been all over

16:16

the place he's done so much but it

16:18

did start with that eyes of the storm

16:20

Beatles single announcement the

16:23

eyes of the storm if we can talk about that one

16:25

I think it's a terrible title for a book eyes of

16:27

the storm but

16:29

yeah like like eyes on the storm

16:32

but you see the eye of the storm is the center

16:34

of a storm but there was four of them and they

16:36

had eight eyes so they were the

16:38

eyes inside the storm looking

16:40

and the outside of the storm are

16:42

the people on the streets of the

16:45

storm looking at them in the hotels

16:47

of the storm in the

16:49

storm hmm I think that's why

16:51

okay mmm okay

16:54

it's all clear to me now it it

16:56

eyes the whole June anyway

17:00

eyes of the storm what would

17:02

you have called it Stephen I

17:04

would have called the eye of the storm okay

17:08

anyway anyway I did not

17:10

get to see the exhibition but

17:12

I know you did and you raved about it

17:15

I saw it twice I went

17:17

twice it was so good I named

17:19

it twice it was so good I went to

17:21

see it twice and it was so good you

17:24

didn't bother to go and see it at all

17:26

and your hashtag team Paul I

17:28

am but I don't I don't live in the UK so there's

17:30

that as well yeah of

17:32

course it's the whole

17:34

immigration hassle of getting

17:36

in but but yeah

17:39

you just raved about it but it was it was

17:41

just a photos but they had them all laid out

17:43

in a certain kind of chronology and you

17:46

can I can't even begin to explain to someone

17:48

who wasn't there what this was like trying to

17:50

use the medium of two babbling

17:53

men to describe fantastic photography

17:55

it was it was you

17:57

know I had reasonably low X expectations

18:00

because I thought these are just sort of snaps.

18:03

These are just like holiday photographs.

18:06

They're worth seeing because he was

18:09

there. But one, I

18:11

was really taken aback by the quality

18:14

of the photographs. You

18:16

know, particularly, you know, not working

18:18

these days you can take a hundred digital photographs and they

18:20

just get to the ones you don't like. The

18:23

way it was laid out, the way it walked you through

18:25

the year in black and white and

18:28

then they went to Miami

18:31

and he got his color

18:33

film and some of the shots in

18:35

Miami were just amazing. And I think the

18:37

thing that came across was

18:41

the sort of innocence of it,

18:43

the fact that these were just four

18:46

guys from working class backgrounds in Liverpool

18:48

from a black and white Liverpool just

18:52

lacing by the pole in Miami. You

18:55

know, they couldn't have possibly thought

18:58

they would be there or do that and

19:00

Cynthia is there and Brian is there and

19:03

interacting with the traffic cops. But the most

19:05

interesting ones are the photographs that Paul takes

19:07

of the crowd. The

19:10

screaming people behind barriers as they're driving

19:12

up in limousines and he's just kind

19:14

of going click, click, click, click, click.

19:17

So you get these series of quick reaction

19:19

shots of, you know, there's one of a

19:22

little girl screaming and then you

19:24

know her mouth gets wider and wider and she's

19:26

sort of straining to get to the car. It

19:29

was spectacular. And I

19:31

think it's now moving to America

19:35

and it's going to be an exhibition. So

19:38

I would really recommend everybody to go and

19:40

see it. If it's within a hundred thousand

19:43

miles of where you are, go

19:45

and see it. If it's on

19:47

earth and you're on earth, you should go see it unless you're

19:50

me. Now

19:52

he did at the start of all this, this was the first

19:54

we heard about Now and

19:56

then. He didn't name it as Now and Then but he said oh and

19:59

it was a bit of a fi- It was probably a

20:01

bad way to launch it because he said the dreaded

20:03

word. We've got we've used some AI we've got an

20:05

AI beetle single coming out and You

20:08

and me Steven we're very good at nuance

20:10

and you know I understand technical jargon and

20:13

but a lot of people thought this was

20:15

just going to be one of those totally

20:17

made-up fake songs Yeah, you know wasn't an

20:19

AI song pitch used machine-adapted learning by Peter

20:21

Jackson And but he teased this single and

20:23

I have to admit at the time. I

20:25

kind of thought he was You

20:28

know, I didn't realize it was a

20:30

done deal I think initially I thought he was talking

20:32

in a vague oh this might happen

20:34

type thing But we now know in retrospect back

20:36

in June it was in the can it was

20:38

done It was done and I I

20:40

expect there were a lot of PR people in Apple

20:44

Hmm not happy. It was kind of you know,

20:46

like I imagine it's like a big button. I

20:48

can slam on the desk Paul's gone rogue and

20:52

they have to You know

20:54

go into damage limitation mode and it was you

20:56

know Like they suddenly had to get Giles Martin

20:59

out to say it's not AI then Ringo was

21:01

commenting or it's not AI. It's actually John It

21:05

certainly as you say Paul is very good at generating

21:08

headlines somebody's got something to promote but I

21:10

think that Set

21:12

a tone for what was coming as

21:15

you know, I'm Not

21:18

a cynical kind of guy but I I

21:21

I felt Apple didn't

21:24

Handle this well from the beginning and I think

21:26

they were probably off balanced

21:29

I Paul and his announcement and they never

21:31

I think really recovered They

21:34

never really got ahead of it Yeah,

21:39

I mean we Let's

21:41

come back to now and then in a second because I just

21:43

want to wrap up one or two other things The

21:46

other kind of stuff that Paul did was he

21:48

went back on tour, which was quite amazing He's

21:51

just finished now a run of massive

21:53

South American shows I

21:55

think your prediction last year was that he was

21:57

not going to play live ever again And

22:00

I wanted to know, would you like to make a

22:03

prediction for 2024? My

22:05

prediction for 2024

22:07

is that for the 54th

22:11

year in a row Paul will not play in

22:13

Balfam. OK,

22:15

I think that's an even money bet. That's

22:18

my prediction. You're

22:24

never on Facebook so you don't see the

22:27

emotion that this stirs up

22:29

whenever the live show from

22:31

Rio and it

22:34

was available as a video, it was live

22:36

streamed and somebody put it up and then

22:38

immediately somebody said I can't sit through two

22:40

hours of Paul's old man

22:43

voice and it's just terrible and he should

22:45

not tour ever again and people saying it's

22:47

Paul McCartney and blah blah blah. I think

22:49

the circular argument. Yeah, and I think my

22:52

attitude there is if Paul

22:55

wants to tour, you know, not for us

22:57

to say that he can't tour. And I

22:59

think if you're at a Paul McCartney concert,

23:02

certainly for the first time, there's

23:04

no better place. The emotion will

23:06

carry you through. If you have seen Paul McCartney at any

23:08

point in the last 6, 7, 8

23:12

years, know that this is going to be the

23:14

same shape. Yes, I don't know

23:16

why it's been renamed got back. It's the

23:18

freshen up tour with a bit of added.

23:21

I got a feeling with Lennon and that's about it.

23:23

But the stuff I've seen of it, it's essentially the

23:26

same. Yeah,

23:28

because I think probably they called to get back because

23:31

calling it the same old same old is probably not

23:34

a winning. But

23:37

it is a part of you know, I

23:39

quite like to see the John Lennon duet

23:41

on I've got a feeling but apart

23:43

from that, it is the same set

23:46

list to all intents and purposes. Yeah.

23:49

So having seen him three or four times

23:51

in the last, you know, in 2018, 2019, I don't need to

23:53

see this show again. But

23:56

go on, Sam, you know, it's

23:58

Paul McCartney. McCartney he's

24:00

doing the hits he will you

24:03

know deliver replicas of the

24:05

band will deliver Beatles tunes and

24:08

yeah don't go and go and

24:10

see him personally I would rather

24:12

go and see Ringo yeah

24:14

just cuz I haven't seen I haven't seen Ringo

24:17

since the early 90s and I think well that'd

24:19

be interesting thing to see I'd like

24:21

to see him one more time because I'd really like to

24:23

go and see the Stones but anyway anyway

24:25

well we can get to that in a sec yeah

24:28

I Paul did North America in 2022 he's

24:30

just an Australian South America in 2023 you

24:34

know is Europe next on the cards for 2024 the

24:36

stadia of Europe seem to be filling

24:39

up with gigs already I certainly know in

24:41

Dublin looking at the scorecard for gigs next

24:43

year we've got Coldplay

24:45

we've got Taylor Swift we've got a couple

24:48

of other big stadium gigs coming through so

24:50

he better find some room if he

24:52

wants to if he wants to hit this part of the

24:54

world but you know that's them that's

24:56

Paul and he's gonna go somewhere I

24:58

guess yeah I believe there

25:01

are football stadia in Belfast so

25:04

I told you

25:06

know I'm sure one of those would be available we'll

25:09

make room you know if needed we've got a garden that's

25:12

all I've got a garden well

25:15

what about 2024 because there's

25:17

rumours that we're gonna get

25:19

a brand new album it's

25:21

already been teased in the latest edition of uncut

25:24

magazine hasn't given a title or anything but it's

25:26

kind of been told that we've got a Paul

25:28

McCartney album to look forward to in 2024 we

25:30

know what we know about it already

25:34

is that Andrew Watt is the producer

25:36

and he's recently getting lots

25:38

of garlands and he's been carried around

25:40

in a sedan chair because he produced

25:42

Hackney diamonds for the Stones which

25:45

is quite a good record and we

25:48

do have the band on the run 50th anniversary

25:50

edition everyone is looking for that weren't they and

25:52

you can file it next to your McCartney 3x3x3x3x3

25:57

deluxe reissue Where

26:02

do you stand on all of that? Well first of all, you're

26:05

going to listen to a brand new Paul McCartney

26:07

album? Yeah, I am.

26:12

Yeah, that's a tough now. Yeah,

26:19

I will listen to a new Paul McCartney album and

26:21

I am excited. The first time, the first thing that

26:23

was in my head when I heard the Stones album,

26:25

you know, I got to the end of that I

26:27

thought, Oh my God, this is the guy that's going

26:29

to be working with McCartney. So

26:32

yeah, I'm very optimistic as you know,

26:35

I'm not a fan of

26:37

chaos and creation. I don't think Godrich

26:39

was a good fit at

26:41

all for Paul. I

26:44

was not blown away by new. I was

26:46

not blown away by Egypt

26:48

station. I really liked McCartney three when

26:50

it came out so

26:52

much. So I actually, you know, bought

26:55

two copies of it. But

26:59

you know, yeah, it's out again. What is

27:01

that about? I mean, they're supposed to be promoting band

27:04

on the run, which I had in my head was

27:06

going to come out this year,

27:08

this side of Christmas because that's, you know,

27:10

it came out very late in 73, but

27:12

it's actually coming out in February 74 or

27:15

it's coming out in February

27:19

2024. So they're advertising it now, but at the

27:21

same time, they're putting out another version of McCartney

27:23

three with a cover by,

27:25

you know, the same guy that did

27:28

now and then. So Paul is kind

27:30

of linking to that. And I think what no

27:33

one wants this. Well, no

27:35

one wants it. I find it odd. I totally agree

27:37

with all of that. I find it odd that he

27:39

announced the band on the run for February, then subsequently

27:41

announces another reissue for sooner than that. And

27:44

there'd be a lot of happy dads

27:46

with their copy of band on the

27:48

run. If they'd released the 50th anniversary

27:50

edition in the first week of December

27:52

2023, I think it's an interesting reissue.

27:56

Again, if people haven't heard, it's

27:58

the first album remastered. whatever.

28:00

But then the second album is what

28:03

Paul is calling Underdubbed, which is essentially

28:05

an early mix of the

28:07

album that was done at the start of October 1973

28:09

by Jeff Emrick in order

28:11

to prepare the album for Final Overdubs, Final Vocals

28:13

and Strings. So there's a couple of, there's no

28:15

orchestra at all, there's a couple of missing guitar

28:17

parts, there's a couple of early vocal takes and

28:19

it's a different running order. And we've already got

28:22

one track out which is the band on the

28:24

run, you know, title track

28:26

itself, which is an interesting listen, you've

28:28

listened to it. Yeah, it

28:30

was interesting, but it's not essential. And

28:34

where is anything essential, Steven, really? What's

28:36

the thing? I think the box, the

28:38

locks box out of living in the

28:41

material world is essential. Okay, okay. But

28:44

yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting. I think

28:46

it's an interesting thing. And,

28:49

you know, it makes me think, well, why didn't you

28:51

do this for the band on the run archive set?

28:53

100% this, why

28:55

didn't you do that? I would be more interested to

28:57

hear the demos that

29:00

were supposedly stolen in

29:03

Lagos. But again, even that story,

29:05

he didn't record those demos on

29:08

a cassette. You know,

29:10

he recorded those demos in Rude Studios largely,

29:12

and then they were dubbed to a cassette

29:14

so that he could take them to

29:17

Nigeria, and those cassettes were stolen. But

29:19

he must have those demos. That would

29:22

be a more interesting thing to me

29:24

than an under dubbed

29:26

is, you know,

29:28

it's as much a word as rock down. It's

29:32

a stupid word. Yeah, you might as well say

29:34

band on the run unfinished. Well,

29:37

it's just it's just it's just a rough look. I

29:41

am a big fan of alternate albums, I have to

29:43

admit Fleetwood Mike have put out a series of alternate

29:45

albums in the last couple of years of different mixes

29:47

and different takes. And, you know, it's, you know,

29:49

it's kind of fun when you want to listen to band on the run,

29:51

but don't want to listen to band on the run, you can you can

29:53

kind of put it on. But you're right, it should have been a disc

29:55

in the box set back in 2010. It

29:57

should have been a standalone record story day

29:59

release that kind of. thing. You

30:01

know I don't really need an umpteenth copy of Band

30:03

on the Run to go with it. I'd be happy

30:06

for it to be a standalone release but I'm glad

30:08

it's something and I think it

30:10

will be interesting and I do like parallel history

30:12

versions of records. Have

30:15

you seen how much it is?

30:17

Yeah I'll be streaming it. Yeah

30:21

everything's expensive. It's a double

30:23

vinyl album and the price

30:26

on the McCartney store is £52.99

30:28

and £4.50 for shipping. So

30:34

almost 60 sterling. You know

30:36

it's over 60 euro for

30:38

a double album and you've

30:40

already got the first album. You've

30:42

already got the first disc multiple

30:44

times. I've got many

30:46

many many copies of Band on the Run. I've

30:49

got the 25th anniversary edition so I'm kind of

30:51

tickled that it's the 25th anniversary edition

30:54

which was the first underwhelming reissue of Band

30:56

on the Run. So maybe

30:58

we can kind of make our own box out with all these

31:00

kind of Frankenstein sets of Band on the Run. I'm

31:03

gonna buy the CD. CDs

31:06

are back back back people I'm telling you this

31:08

but it's only £26. It'll drop. If

31:13

though we are getting this reissue in

31:16

February and we've got this Andrew Watt

31:18

album coming down the tracks I

31:20

can't really see another big reissue coming next

31:22

year. The London town back to the egg. I'm

31:25

just gonna assume that's dead in the water.

31:27

Is the archive collection dead in the water? Yeah

31:30

I'm pretty convinced it's dead in the

31:32

water unless unless

31:35

relaxing backstage at the Macarena

31:37

Stadium he was listening to

31:39

our Press to Play episodes and he was

31:41

thinking you know what those Irish guys are

31:44

right Press to Play is f***ing brilliant album

31:46

and I guess get me

31:48

my archivist on the phone and

31:51

get that box out in 2024. Let

31:53

me patch things up with Eric Stewart and get

31:56

back to work. Yeah well Paul McCartney

31:58

2024. they'll just

32:00

be stuff and more stuff and will be

32:02

slightly vexed and but it'll be grand and

32:04

I I'm always it is hard to believe

32:07

I know we are complaining about the three-year anniversary

32:09

of McCartney 3 but it is hard to believe

32:12

it is three years since the last Paul McCartney

32:14

album I've kind of lost sense of time like

32:16

many people around the world in terms of what's

32:18

actually happening and see it is about

32:20

time that we got a new Paul McCartney album

32:23

and I'm curious because I

32:25

like Hackney Diamonds a lot but of

32:27

course he's kind of got a stones

32:29

template to work to as a producer Andrew

32:31

Watt and you don't really know

32:34

what the McCartney template he's going to work

32:36

to is because in some

32:38

ways he doesn't have a template no

32:42

I am tempted to think

32:44

that stones are perhaps more

32:47

willing to take direction you

32:50

know Jagger in particular I think is always

32:52

willing to take direction from whoever

32:55

he perceives to be the producer

32:57

du jour whoever the young people

32:59

are listening to you know Jagger's always got his eye

33:01

on that or his ear on that I

33:05

don't know you know we hear you know

33:07

McCartney working with Goldridge doesn't end well working

33:09

with Costello there's almost a bit of friction

33:12

I think the stones are probably much more collaborative

33:15

then there was arguably more writing on

33:17

this for the stones because it had

33:19

been you know 273 years since that

33:21

previous album and there was a

33:24

lot of writing on it well the question

33:26

is and I don't know how true it is but there's

33:28

this sort of hubbub that it's not

33:31

not necessarily a Jagger album but that

33:33

Jagger was the main motivator to get

33:36

this record done once and for all

33:38

and to lead out on the

33:41

the making of it and I don't know how

33:43

true that is or maybe that's a bit of

33:45

projection it's yeah it's

33:47

interesting I I

33:49

didn't get that sense from listening to it you

33:51

know there's a lot of great guitar work

33:54

on it there's a lot of great riffs

33:56

on it and I think I think

33:59

Keith small

36:00

parallel stories, there was the Stowe School Tape which

36:02

was very interesting and all the rest, but let's

36:04

just cut to the chase and let's

36:06

talk about now

36:08

and then. When

36:10

we started this season we did an

36:13

episode zero, you know we did not

36:15

know back in September what exactly was

36:17

happening with now and then. So

36:19

you know Paul did this kind of ad hoc announcement,

36:22

as you say there's a bit of rowing back done,

36:24

there was this moment in August when we thought was

36:26

all about to drop and it didn't. What

36:28

we've subsequently learned was that this song

36:30

was ready at the end of

36:33

2022 and they had to try and

36:35

figure out when to put it out and it was very

36:37

nearly going to come out earlier in this year, it was

36:39

supposed to come out in March at one point, but

36:42

they were trying to figure out where

36:44

once they knew in the second half of 2022 that this

36:46

song was coming, they were

36:49

trying to figure out, daving the record

36:51

company, about what it could be attached

36:53

to. So before we get

36:55

onto the song itself, the

36:58

red and blue reissues, was that the

37:00

right decision? No. Okay,

37:03

continue. No

37:05

it absolutely wasn't that it makes no

37:07

sense whatsoever and

37:09

I know that people will complain about

37:12

me complaining, but

37:15

I think it was a terrible decision

37:17

and I mean you can say, oh

37:19

well you know the album's got to

37:21

number one, except well maybe no they

37:23

didn't. A lot of people were

37:25

annoyed because I think

37:28

of The Beatles, that the official UK

37:30

Beatles canon starts with please please me

37:33

and for me anyway and I think a lot of

37:35

other people it finishes with the blue album because

37:38

it was really those two albums in 1973

37:40

marked an end I think it was a okay

37:43

the Beatles on 1973, they haven't

37:45

done anything for three years, they're not getting back

37:47

together again, here is the

37:50

full stop. I

37:52

object to adding

37:54

songs, changing

37:57

the set list, I object to the way

37:59

it was done. the

40:00

track listing. The objections I have

40:02

to Red and Blue are,

40:04

first of all, similar one to

40:06

you, I didn't realise until the actual day

40:08

they came out that

40:10

the vinyl had a different running order to the

40:13

CDs and I thought that

40:15

was insane. So the first

40:17

thing that I thought was insane was I went into my

40:19

record store to look at them and the price, I

40:22

thought the price was outrageous, obnoxious,

40:24

certainly in Dublin, but the triple

40:26

vinyls were 75 euro, which

40:29

is about, what, I don't know. But 150 euro,

40:31

if you wanted to buy both of them,

40:36

seemed to me to be outrageous and

40:38

the CDs were, well, they're 25 quid each,

40:40

but there's still a mark-up there for a

40:43

double CD for 25 quid. But 75 quid

40:45

for the vinyl and for the vinyl not

40:47

to be, you know, I thought,

40:50

you know, either be one thing or the other,

40:52

either have an expanded chronological set list or don't.

40:54

But don't do this thing with the vinyl did,

40:57

which is put in the extra tracks as a

40:59

standalone third record. And if you look at

41:01

the blue third album, you

41:03

know, the chronology is all over the place. It

41:05

starts with now and then side five,

41:08

track one, then it goes to 68,

41:10

then it goes back to within you

41:12

without you, because heaven forbid that should

41:14

be upfront on a Beatles album. And

41:17

I think it's just a mess. And thirdly, would

41:19

make you think because the double albums are not

41:21

in a triplicate sleeve or in a double or

41:23

the triple albums are in a double sleeve, you

41:26

know, maybe they did have the stampers for the first

41:28

two and they just slotted in this extra bonus album.

41:31

I don't know. It just

41:33

seemed crazy to me. The

41:35

CDs, on the other hand, you know,

41:37

I'll pick them up in the sales or

41:39

something. I quite like the playlist tracking of

41:42

them. And, you know, it's been interesting. My

41:44

kids, you know,

41:46

I've kind of been poking around and, you

41:48

know, like, oh, these are all bangers, all

41:50

these songs, these are great, whatever, you know,

41:52

they recognize all of them. And I've said

41:54

this before elsewhere, it is a glorified Spotify

41:57

playlist. It is a branded Spotify playlist for

41:59

the new. generation that's what these are

42:01

and you know red and blue works

42:03

very very well because the later stuff tends to be

42:05

more popular with the young people and you can cart

42:07

off the early stuff and people can look at that

42:10

in its own time and they can look at all

42:12

the later more popular stuff because post

42:14

66 67 tends to

42:16

do much better in the streaming universe anyway

42:18

so yeah

42:21

I don't get the vinyl CD separation I

42:23

think they should have just run with the

42:25

running order and not be half of one

42:27

thing I don't mind now

42:29

and then being I think it makes more sense being

42:31

at the end of the 2 CD

42:33

run or the end of the playlist but yeah

42:36

side 5 track one it doesn't make

42:38

sense so

42:40

I actually haven't bought them yet have you got a

42:42

copy of the 2023 red and blues

42:45

yeah when everybody was sitting

42:48

by their wireless is waiting for

42:50

the single to

42:53

be released and played at two o'clock on

42:56

the day that data that came out I was

42:58

over on the Beatles website hoovering up the limited

43:01

edition box at

43:04

something so I bought

43:06

you know 50 copies of

43:08

the cassette single and I

43:11

bought the I bought the double box with

43:13

the two final but it's not I'm not

43:16

opening it it's just it's

43:18

part of my pension plan and

43:23

you know we could spend an hour or

43:25

two talking about the actual individual remixes yeah

43:28

let's not oh okay I thought

43:30

you're gonna say let's actually do that no because

43:32

I mean I've listened to some of them

43:34

and I kind of think yes there's nothing that

43:37

I want to hear these

43:41

are not for me they're not

43:43

for you these are

43:45

for young people if we had a

43:47

young person we could ask definitely

43:51

not there definitely isn't a young

43:53

person anywhere yeah have

43:55

you any maybe we'll keep it to one do

43:57

you have like a one good remix one bad

43:59

remix The one bad

44:01

remix is I Am The Walrus because

44:05

I think it

44:07

strays, I mean it's completely

44:09

reworked the back end of that song

44:11

and I think it strays from a

44:16

production decision into an artistic

44:19

decision and no doubt the

44:21

Beatles themselves or their organization

44:23

have signed off on it but I

44:25

think it goes beyond simply

44:27

pulling out the drums or boosting the

44:30

backing vocals or creating a stereo mix

44:32

or moving the drums to the center

44:35

it's an actual artistic decision

44:38

to fundamentally change the back end

44:40

of that song and I appreciate

44:42

I listen to it and I

44:44

think this isn't the

44:46

song it's like getting up in the morning and coming

44:49

down to your living room and finding all the furniture

44:51

has been rearranged it's like your house but it's

44:54

not I mean that happens to be quite often to

44:56

be fair but have

44:58

you checked your carbon monoxide alarm yeah

45:00

I think that must be it but I

45:05

get these are not for me these are

45:07

for as you say people listening in the

45:09

kitchen on a mono speaker single

45:12

speaker blasting out fair enough not

45:15

for me I do I have I

45:17

thought you have a mix that I

45:19

really really know okay fair enough

45:23

when I first heard the I'm the walrus remix I

45:25

kind of laughed I thought it was so egregious it's

45:28

apparently supposed to match the chaotic mix of the

45:30

mono I'm not too sure about that it's very

45:32

different but the two ones that really annoyed me

45:34

were revolution because I really wanted that to kick

45:36

ass and it still doesn't beat the mono version

45:39

and old brown shoe I don't

45:41

know what they've done with old brown shoe but it's a

45:44

it's just a mess to me the one

45:46

the ones I do like I think the rubber

45:48

soul tracks are really actually very good

45:51

and they're at the in my

45:53

life mix I think is really

45:55

really soft and lovely and perfect

45:57

and You know you

45:59

can't do. That parties and stuff that

46:01

there are some kind of shining sparkling moments.

46:03

But once you get into that stuff that

46:05

you know intimately and that seems very very

46:08

different, it's it's it's very strange. End of

46:10

part one: Intermission. Hey,

46:13

it's Ryan Reynolds, owner and user of Mint

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period. End

47:18

of intermission ought to, but we

47:20

still are skirting around the issue.

47:23

Everyone wants to know the official nothing is

47:25

real opinion on now and then because when

47:28

eventually they did Rent releasing now and then

47:30

and you know we can argue whether was

47:32

The Stones or Taylor Swift delayed the announcement.

47:35

It was a very twenties announcement. he was

47:37

announced one week, released the following week and

47:39

then the red and blue schematic the weekend

47:41

of. Now.

47:44

And then crosses your verdict. It's.

47:47

Quite nice. Is. Gonna

47:49

business? I mean, I. i

47:52

i think it's great i think it's

47:54

a wonderful song and i'm it said

47:56

yeah i kind of heard as again

47:58

about a day or two and I hadn't

48:00

heard it in a week or two, you know? And,

48:02

you know, you kind of need, these

48:04

things need a bit of time and need a bit of

48:07

distance and I was kind of, I was

48:09

kind of potting around and I realized I'd bought the

48:11

single but I'd never actually played the single, so I

48:13

put the single, the actual seven inch on, and

48:16

yeah, it just sounded lovely. I think it's

48:18

a, I think it's a fantastic song. I

48:21

don't really have a problem with it being at

48:23

the end of the Blue album, I think, you

48:27

know, I know your point that

48:29

it's 67 to 70 but

48:31

I think it does work on a number of

48:33

levels. I think it's a fine song, I think

48:35

it's very well constructed and put together, but

48:38

the thing that has struck me throughout

48:40

the last couple of weeks of hearing

48:42

it is that you are getting John

48:45

Lennon's voice and we, you know,

48:47

we had real love and we had Free as

48:49

a Bird, but, and

48:51

as much as I'm very fond of those

48:53

songs, you could kind of tell that there

48:55

was some trickery going on, there was a

48:58

veil in the song, whereas

49:00

with Now and Then it's really,

49:03

really incredible what they have done

49:05

technologically and to actually be in

49:07

a shop or to turn on the radio and

49:09

hear John Lennon's voice as the

49:11

voice of the Beatles, to

49:14

me, I think has been a great

49:16

thing. I think

49:19

it's a great thing, but you asked me did I,

49:21

you know, did I think it was a good song?

49:23

I think it's an okay song, but it

49:25

doesn't have to be a great song. It's

49:27

enough that it exists and

49:29

I agree with you, it's a great, you

49:31

know, I really enjoyed it, it's a bit of an earworm.

49:34

I kind of had it playing in

49:36

my head for weeks and weeks and weeks and

49:39

yeah, I could still kind of hear it, hear

49:41

the hooks, it's got everything that you want from a

49:43

Beatles song in the sense that it's got hooks

49:46

every 20 seconds or

49:48

something there and you know,

49:51

it's like Regga said about Free

49:53

as a Bird, it really sounds like them, it

49:55

sounds like the Beatles. You

50:01

know, I heard I had heard the work tape and

50:03

let's be clear. It's not a demo that they were

50:05

working It was a work tape. It wasn't a demo.

50:07

It was less than a demo and

50:09

I Think

50:11

you know in 1995 George Harrison was

50:13

probably right that this is not a

50:16

particularly good song The

50:18

tape is terrible. Let's not talk about

50:20

the rewriting of What

50:22

did George actually say or what

50:24

did he actually mean? But

50:27

I think It's like you

50:29

all say Paul McCartney has this superpower that he

50:31

can hear a record in his head He can

50:33

hear the finished record. He knows what the drum

50:35

part is what the bass part is and That

50:39

can be fantastically useful in the studio

50:41

very irritating if you're his band mate

50:43

and he's saying no No, just play

50:45

this or just play that and maybe

50:47

in 1995 He

50:50

thought yeah, he could hear this in his head.

50:53

I think he's done a very good job It's

50:57

great to have it It

50:59

doesn't have to be the best song in the world It's

51:02

great that there's one more beatle song. Is it the

51:04

last beatle song? I don't see why it should be

51:06

the last beatle song we have ours and ours of

51:08

get back material That have all four Beatles

51:10

on it that Paul could go in and finish Why

51:13

not? I I think

51:15

the technology improves. I

51:18

think I think the temptation to do it will

51:20

be irresistible the one downside

51:22

of all of this is I

51:24

think The

51:27

anthology reunion and

51:29

free as a bird and real love

51:31

are just being quietly Sidelined

51:34

and pushed to one side and the

51:36

whole marketing thing was the Beatles are

51:39

back together again in 2023 They

51:42

haven't put on a new song since 1970 Was

51:45

essentially the message, you know For

51:50

An old chart watcher like myself It

51:53

certainly warmed the heart to see the song

51:55

go to number one Which it

51:57

did in the UK and in a couple of other countries which

52:01

did mean it was their first number one in

52:03

54 years since

52:05

the Ballad of John and Yoko and stretched

52:07

their number of UK number ones to 18

52:09

and so you know someone who grew up

52:11

on the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles

52:13

written by Mike Reed and Tim

52:15

Rice and all that Paul Campacini then

52:19

I was you know that meant

52:21

a lot because if

52:23

you were of the anthology age you probably

52:25

still you know take

52:27

a deep intake of breath through gritted teeth when

52:29

you think of free as a bird being released

52:32

after anthology as a single and thus not getting

52:34

to number one so at least they got the order right this

52:37

time round and you know I thought

52:39

it was going to be a difficult thing to get to number

52:41

one but it got to number one by a fair margin now

52:43

it doesn't take a lot to get to number one these days

52:45

but it got plays it sold an

52:47

awful lot of physical media and it did it

52:50

did very well so I was glad for it to be there I think

52:53

we'll see how it is over time as I

52:55

said it's nice to kind of come back to

52:57

it I you know the Beatles were

53:00

all just about great songs so all they have

53:02

to do is deliver a great song and I

53:04

think they have delivered a great song it's not

53:06

going to match your 30 year old

53:08

memory of hearing I'm the walrus for the

53:10

first time but you know

53:12

it was certainly from a

53:14

personal level a song that I needed at the time

53:18

the I think obviously

53:20

though we cannot move on from

53:22

talking about now and then without talking about

53:24

the amazing video that came with it huh

53:28

you love that video yeah

53:30

it's brilliant that video

53:32

is fantastic I my god

53:34

I've never seen such high tech

53:36

wizardry this is the

53:38

first video I believe that Mr. Peter Jackson

53:40

has ever made and

53:44

today should laugh Peter Jackson has never

53:46

made it yeah yes

53:48

um uh it's it's

53:50

it's a

53:52

cure its egg okay

53:57

the first time I saw the video I

54:00

was like, what is happening? And

54:05

then I got to the end and then I watched it again. And

54:09

the more I watched it, I now have

54:12

zero problems with the video. I

54:14

understand what people's

54:16

problems with the video are, but

54:19

I will stick my fingers in my ear

54:21

and go la, la, la and refuse to

54:23

listen because I just

54:25

think the

54:27

Beatles made many

54:30

slapdash, very silly, crazy

54:33

music clips and videos that were

54:35

just done on a lamb. And

54:38

I know we've talked about this at our live shows

54:40

and all the rest. I'm sure Peter Jackson would have

54:42

loved if Paul and Ringo

54:44

could have given him two days on a

54:46

green screen together so he could actually compile

54:49

them properly with clips of John

54:52

and George. And instead, Paul

54:54

and Ringo just said, or we'll just record it

54:57

in our house on our phone and you sort

54:59

it out. And that's kind of

55:01

what he's had to work with. So I think,

55:03

you know, maybe he had one hand tied behind

55:05

his back. When it works,

55:07

it works brilliantly. And when it doesn't, it

55:09

just makes me smile and think that's silly

55:11

and fun. Yeah. Well,

55:14

that's what I mean. It's good in parts and bad

55:16

in other parts. But

55:18

when it's bad, it's really bad.

55:20

It's the mils and burdens sunset

55:22

or sunrise at the beginning. You

55:25

just say, what? And then suddenly you get that all

55:28

four of them lined up. And I

55:30

thought that this is just the cheapest looking. It

55:33

looked as if they spent about 50 P

55:36

on some cheap camera to

55:38

put that together. And

55:40

then you get this incredibly affecting

55:44

final sort of 60 seconds where

55:46

it's spilling back from,

55:48

you know, the rooftop and the final

55:50

photo session is back as children and

55:53

it's the fans. And I find the

55:55

last sort of minute of the video,

55:57

minute and a half of the video,

55:59

incredible. moving but it's

56:03

got no continuity of style.

56:05

Yeah. The video so it's just kind of

56:08

chopping and changing for oh what does this button

56:10

do? What does that button do? I would

56:13

argue that we are living in 2023 and there is

56:15

no consistency of style

56:18

in our universe or in our media

56:21

habits these days anyway all that stuff

56:23

has gone out the bloody window and

56:25

you know the I

56:27

do agree that the end of it's very affecting but I

56:30

also sometimes feel that

56:33

we need to have a bit of a knee-jerk against this kind of

56:35

rock aristocracy authenticity the Beatles

56:37

look how important this is

56:40

and to have stuff that's a little bit

56:42

goofy and memeable and kind of silly and

56:45

dumb is no harm as well and

56:47

you know as I said I think it could have

56:49

been done with a bit more finesse if you wanted

56:51

to do a music video where you know

56:53

clips of John and George are hanging around and there are bits

56:55

where it works very well like when you know 67 George

56:58

is in you know Hoggill, Hoggmill

57:01

Studios and George is in the background and all

57:03

the rest and when Ringo is sitting at the

57:05

drums on the Hello Goodbye video set you know

57:07

I think that works very well so you know

57:09

I think you know it could have

57:11

been a bit tweaked a bit more but as I said I think

57:13

Paul and Ringo are like you know we've

57:15

done five minutes on our cameras and now

57:18

you can just compile a video of some

57:20

type I again

57:22

I'm very you know I've

57:24

found the interesting part of this process is

57:27

that you know once upon

57:29

a time Beatles music was being reissued and

57:31

remarketed and I was the young person buying

57:33

it when it was coming out

57:35

on CDs and all the rest and anthology

57:37

was coming out you know

57:39

I'm very interested to see the

57:41

generation who's whose first significant

57:43

exposure to the Beatles was Peter Jackson's

57:45

Get Back for them to experience a

57:47

new single for it to

57:49

generate so much joy in younger

57:52

Beatles fans and again my

57:54

own kids were like yeah there's a new Beatles thing

57:56

that's you know it is

57:58

a little seed that will grow

58:00

and have repercussions this song

58:03

for a lot of people. There's been an there's an

58:05

awful lot more Beatles fans because of

58:07

what's happened in the last 12 months. I'm

58:10

so old I'm not going to live to see that little thing grow

58:12

to be a mighty move. We

58:15

don't, you know, the best time to plant a

58:17

tree was 20 years ago, second best time is

58:19

now and we don't plant trees to sit in

58:21

their shade but for future, I don't know, I'm

58:23

trying to think of the old Japanese

58:26

proverb. But in short, now and

58:28

then, yeah, I think

58:30

it's great. It's fantastic. I'm delighted the

58:32

world has one more Beatles song. I

58:35

look forward to having more time with

58:37

it. And yeah,

58:41

I it's a thumbs up from me.

58:43

I certainly did not expect on January

58:45

the 1st that by Christmas, we would

58:47

have this song it, you know, irrespective

58:49

of Paul's early firing of the gun

58:52

back in June, I'm still surprised and

58:54

amazed that it actually happened at

58:56

all. And this one final story. Did

58:58

you hear the story Stephen about them,

59:01

the Caroline Bookman, who was in the

59:03

string section for now and then? Did

59:05

you hear this story? It's

59:10

a very sad story because Paul

59:14

recorded the strings for now and then in Los

59:17

Angeles in 2022. And

59:20

it was recorded in secrecy and the string

59:22

players were gathered at the last minute to

59:24

come to the studio to record what they

59:26

thought was a just some strings for a

59:29

solo Paul McCartney song called Give and Take.

59:31

There wasn't any vocals. And one of the

59:33

string players was a young

59:36

lady called Caroline Bookman, who sadly passed

59:38

away in March of this year. She'd

59:40

had a battle with cancer and started

59:42

at 48 and she never knew that

59:44

she played on a Beatles song that

59:47

she played on their final to date number one.

59:50

And I mean, it's kind of

59:53

quite sad and remarkable how the

59:55

Beatles wind their ways into people's

59:57

lives. Whole

1:00:00

kept secret. Now you know that

1:00:02

there's a significant noisy cohort has

1:00:04

nothing is real people who think

1:00:06

we are. To. Mean to

1:00:08

Paul Mccarthy, I'm gonna wind up back

1:00:10

and say I'm I'm gonna give Paul

1:00:12

both my kidneys and I love him

1:00:14

very much Am. But you know I

1:00:16

I I just heard a noise there.

1:00:18

I I I think even though we

1:00:21

are live on Christmas Day broadcasting to

1:00:23

Masses I I've definitely heard somebody scurrying

1:00:25

about outside and am I know it

1:00:27

can't be producer a job? He's unfortunately

1:00:29

been called where he's normally here on

1:00:31

Christmas Day and I definitely made sure

1:00:33

that he didn't follow us up to

1:00:35

the carbon that he hasn't been. Able

1:00:37

to make it few. but I just think that

1:00:39

that this somebody's gonna knock at the door. Oh

1:00:43

My. God. I'm going to open it up. A:

1:00:45

Who Is Us? It's

1:00:48

it's. a Christmas L. Oh My.

1:00:51

God. It's North American roving correspondent

1:00:53

and resident young person and international

1:00:55

popstar. William Henson. Happy Christmas

1:00:57

fellows! Hi William, how are you have you

1:01:00

had a good Christmas so far? I've

1:01:02

had a wonderful Christmas sell As I

1:01:04

gotta be honest with you, Ah, what

1:01:07

a beautiful snowy day! It kind of

1:01:09

a treacherous walk up to the cabin,

1:01:11

but I'm. I'm happy I was able

1:01:13

to make an hour. I'm glad that you guys

1:01:15

left a flair for me. Yeah wells, yes I

1:01:17

thought is true that but of course was a

1:01:19

flair for you Absolutely hundred percent. And wasn't It

1:01:22

wasn't a warning. More new off for yeah, Not

1:01:24

a cry for Allah. We weren't. Am

1:01:27

you like now and then? Williams?

1:01:30

I love now and then. I'm.

1:01:33

Yeah, I'm a I things. Like he

1:01:35

has had a think it is I heard you

1:01:37

while I was. Just

1:01:39

a high at yeah me. I

1:01:42

think it's remarkable were they able

1:01:44

to do. I do. Also, I

1:01:47

said this when I came out. But.

1:01:50

I. mean is certainly not gonna be

1:01:52

the last beatles song am in can

1:01:54

i ask you a question he surrendered

1:01:56

like you said you liked nine them

1:02:01

Is it super good? Well no

1:02:03

but I mean I had

1:02:05

this conversation with my buddy Josh.

1:02:08

Josh! And

1:02:13

he called me and he was like

1:02:15

man this is like it's

1:02:17

like good but it's like good

1:02:20

you know and and I

1:02:22

said well yeah I mean obviously it's good

1:02:25

because if it was great it

1:02:28

would have been out 50 years

1:02:30

ago you

1:02:33

know like yeah you wouldn't just leave hey

1:02:35

Jude on the on the cutting room floor

1:02:37

you know it's like it's

1:02:39

also weird I don't know how you

1:02:41

guys feel about it but I I think

1:02:44

it's hilarious not hilarious but I think

1:02:47

it's interesting I guess you could say

1:02:49

that it's

1:02:51

branded as a Beatles song free as a bird is

1:02:53

branded as a Beatles song real love is branded as

1:02:55

a Beatles song when they

1:02:57

were they were John Lennon songs written

1:03:00

after he was a Beatle I mean

1:03:03

I know I that's that's a very obvious

1:03:05

thing to say but it the

1:03:07

fact that such a big hubbub was made

1:03:09

that it was the last

1:03:11

Beatles song and it's not it's

1:03:14

not really even a Beatles song no

1:03:17

I agree with you and it's very much in

1:03:19

this it's very much in the style of the

1:03:21

Lennon solo piano

1:03:24

ballad slightly apologetic love song

1:03:26

you know that he didn't really do

1:03:28

those until you know

1:03:30

it's imagined basically it's it's post 1971

1:03:33

let me are post

1:03:35

1971 I mean it is 2023 Beatles and I know what you mean this

1:03:37

isn't the last

1:03:40

Beatles song but I think in in

1:03:42

many ways it is the last de

1:03:44

novo Beatles creation you know there's other stuff

1:03:46

in the vault and there's other stuff that

1:03:48

are pulled out but you know

1:03:51

and yeah Lennon is strictly speaking the song

1:03:53

writer but Paul has edited us taking certain

1:03:55

bits out he's moved it around there is

1:03:58

a bit of Lennon and McCartney weekend

1:04:00

going on here. I 100% agree

1:04:02

with you. I

1:04:05

just think that it's

1:04:07

interesting. So many people get upset about, you

1:04:10

know, oh, it's, you

1:04:13

know, do we touch the sacred texts? Do

1:04:16

we leave it alone? And like,

1:04:18

honestly, I mean, McCartney, he's a pretty driven guy.

1:04:21

We all know that he's a pretty driven

1:04:23

guy. He could go in there and piece

1:04:26

together something every day from all the material

1:04:28

that by that metric

1:04:30

it's like, okay, well, what is

1:04:32

special? What is allowed and what

1:04:34

isn't? You know what I mean? I

1:04:36

think that's that

1:04:38

was my main thing about now and then. Obviously

1:04:41

though, I'm kind of like you, Jason, like I think

1:04:44

the chart thing, I walked

1:04:46

around that was the week of Thanksgiving

1:04:48

or right after Thanksgiving or something. And

1:04:51

I walked around to all

1:04:53

of my family and I said, can you

1:04:55

believe that a band that broke up

1:04:59

in 1970 is number one in the in the UK? But

1:05:05

yeah, I like now

1:05:08

and then I'm happy that it happened. I

1:05:10

think kind

1:05:13

of going back to what you just really quick, I just

1:05:15

wanted to say really quickly

1:05:17

about the the

1:05:19

McCartney, the band on the run,

1:05:22

new anniversary edition and McCartney

1:05:24

three. If

1:05:27

truth be told, I

1:05:29

think probably those announcements were delayed

1:05:31

by yes. You're

1:05:33

right now and then and the red

1:05:35

and blue and, you know, all

1:05:37

those dads that would have

1:05:40

been happy to have a 50th

1:05:42

anniversary edition of band on the

1:05:44

run probably are sitting there

1:05:48

fine with their editions of the

1:05:50

red and blue that the kids

1:05:52

got. Or their next 11 CD set,

1:05:54

which yeah. probably

1:06:00

the reissue of the year. Yeah,

1:06:03

I think, yeah, of

1:06:05

course, you've made me think there about Liverpool's

1:06:07

sound collage. Is that Paul McCartney going back

1:06:09

to Beatles tapes and making new music? It

1:06:11

kind of is. He

1:06:13

could be doing all that. Honestly, again,

1:06:16

I'm down. I personally, as

1:06:19

long as it's done well, I think that that's

1:06:21

fine. And I think now

1:06:23

and then was done well. I think secretly now

1:06:25

and then sounds like I don't know from Egypt

1:06:27

Station, but I'll digress. I, it's

1:06:31

very, it's very, you know,

1:06:33

21st century McCartney production. Yeah.

1:06:41

With a little bit of

1:06:43

Rocket Man soundtrack from Giles Martin. It

1:06:47

is quite considering this is the

1:06:49

guy who quite recently

1:06:51

gave us a song called For You. It's

1:06:56

quite a very clean,

1:06:58

clear production

1:07:00

of a record. There's nothing there that's

1:07:02

necessarily going to timestamp it. You

1:07:05

can argue there's a bit of time stamping with what

1:07:07

good old Jeff Lin did to Free As a Bird. Some

1:07:10

people are not fond of that. But there's

1:07:13

a very, you know, Paul

1:07:16

hasn't made a record that sounded

1:07:18

as clean and unproduced

1:07:20

in quite a while. You know, you can kind

1:07:23

of often feel the hand of his producer like

1:07:26

you do in Egypt Station or all the rest.

1:07:28

So it's, it's, as you say, Rocket Man soundtrack

1:07:30

is a good shout. It's a very, it's

1:07:34

a very clean production, you know,

1:07:36

strings, drums, neat, everything that's right.

1:07:39

Yeah. Yeah. I thought

1:07:41

it was done really well. I just think it's

1:07:44

like Steven, you know, Apple

1:07:48

has just. They

1:07:51

must be running around amidst a fire. Well,

1:07:54

they're also dealing with the biggest band

1:07:56

in the world with this really heavy

1:07:59

legacy and four. people who are all

1:08:01

intimately involved in what's going on with

1:08:03

one person in particular Paul really

1:08:06

driven as you say to try and be

1:08:08

a you know he it

1:08:11

is not a hands-off operation you know

1:08:14

Dylan runs a hands-off operation you want to

1:08:16

put out the bootleg series number

1:08:19

50 I don't give a shit you know just

1:08:21

do it I'm just gonna go on the road

1:08:23

I'm gonna record another crazy album and

1:08:26

you know he he just you know

1:08:28

it's a different type of archive and

1:08:30

you know it's amazing that anything

1:08:33

gets done I you know

1:08:35

red and blue are kind of an expensive

1:08:37

folly but now and then I think is

1:08:39

a great song I'm glad it exists and

1:08:41

I think we can all agree it's better

1:08:43

than the long and winding road okay that's

1:08:45

my controversial certainly no

1:08:49

can I tell you the one for one thing

1:08:51

that genuinely upset me about the lead the lead

1:08:53

on was the fact that when they interviewed Ringo

1:08:55

and they said why is this not

1:08:57

right yet and he went I don't know it should

1:09:00

have been out by now well I don't know and

1:09:02

you just had a send you had a genuine sats

1:09:05

that you know

1:09:07

and the rumor is that he did not particularly want

1:09:09

to revisit this he did not particularly want to do

1:09:11

it when he was first asked and supposedly the rumor

1:09:13

that Giles Martin was dispatched you

1:09:17

know that Paul said you know do you want to come

1:09:19

and do this and Ringo not

1:09:21

so keen and that Giles Martin

1:09:23

then persuaded and become under it so I think

1:09:25

there is this sense that Ringo

1:09:27

yeah fine come in drum I'm

1:09:30

gone do what you like and

1:09:33

he had no part of this and I think

1:09:35

it's kind of I used the word on Facebook

1:09:37

page and then I was sort of criticized

1:09:40

or laughed out that it was

1:09:42

kind of distressing that one

1:09:44

of the method one of the key members of

1:09:47

band 50% of the band who are still with

1:09:49

us seem to

1:09:51

have no insight or not be involved

1:09:53

in these decisions Ringo

1:09:55

has formed like you remember when he was

1:09:57

waving the revolver box set around online before

1:10:00

there was an announcement like he just doesn't like

1:10:02

you know you could say to ring a ring

1:10:04

ringo was definitely told at some point Ringo

1:10:06

that song is coming out on November the

1:10:08

2nd end of story oh

1:10:10

yeah it's just

1:10:13

off doing something else I don't I

1:10:16

take them with a pinch of salt there is a good

1:10:19

article that came out in billboard which

1:10:21

did explain this kind of odd thing

1:10:23

that we mentioned earlier on which was that yeah it was

1:10:25

in the can for a year before any before we got

1:10:27

to hear it and people like what do

1:10:30

we do with this thing and it would have been

1:10:32

very different if it had just suddenly dropped early

1:10:34

in March and maybe that's why Paul's calendar

1:10:37

was kind of vacant at the start of

1:10:39

the year he wasn't really doing much then

1:10:42

they took a decision and they looked at the

1:10:44

diary they looked at the release schedules and said

1:10:46

you know when they're absolutely the best time to

1:10:48

release this the best time to release this is

1:10:51

when the Stones have their first album out in

1:10:53

five decades and the Taylor Swift album is

1:10:56

about to come out yeah that's perfect let's

1:10:58

nobody knew well to be fair to be

1:11:00

fair Taylor

1:11:03

Swift puts out a new album every week

1:11:05

so there's you're always that's a

1:11:07

minefield you're always gonna have to deal with yeah

1:11:09

like in New York City you're never more than

1:11:11

six foot from a rat and just in the

1:11:14

universe you're never more than about a fortnight away

1:11:16

from a Taylor Swift record that's just the way

1:11:18

it goes and we're in Taylor's universe and you

1:11:20

keep her name out of your mouth Stephen Cockroft

1:11:23

she's great sorry you

1:11:27

just then were you were then

1:11:29

faced with the situation where the two big

1:11:31

releases so yeah where the new Stones

1:11:33

album and the new Beatles well also and

1:11:36

there was that very funny funny cartoon with

1:11:38

the two guys past the record shop and

1:11:40

in October and the Stones the Beatles and

1:11:42

we're like how far back did the clocks

1:11:44

go last weekend I just

1:11:48

I just thought it was odd let's call

1:11:50

it a coincidence yeah well

1:11:52

2023 you know we

1:11:55

mentioned their band on the run and we

1:11:57

should of course talk about the people we have

1:11:59

loved lost in 2023 and I think

1:12:02

the person who looms large over

1:12:04

all of this is the recent

1:12:06

sad passing of Denny Lane who

1:12:09

really has a, you know, had a

1:12:11

unique position for over a decade of

1:12:13

being, you know, the only person to

1:12:17

last that long in a creative partnership with

1:12:19

Paul McCartney in Wings. He was there for

1:12:21

the whole trek, even, you know,

1:12:23

Wings but I'd, you know,

1:12:25

more records over a longer time than the Beatles did,

1:12:27

you could argue, you know,

1:12:30

he, it was, we

1:12:32

knew he was unwell but it was a sad loss.

1:12:35

It was. Denny Lane, gone now.

1:12:38

Too soon, Stephen.

1:12:41

But, yeah,

1:12:44

apparently, you know, purely

1:12:47

accidental timing, you know, the same week

1:12:49

that Band on the Run is announced

1:12:52

for reissue, Denny passes

1:12:55

away and once again, you go

1:12:57

to Paul's website and I am distressed at

1:13:00

the number of obituaries that Paul has written

1:13:02

on his website. You can

1:13:04

go to the news section on paulmccarthy.com and

1:13:06

you just see all these black boxes of, you

1:13:09

know, we had a great time with this

1:13:11

person and we'll see you in heaven and it

1:13:14

must be tough. This

1:13:17

is going to be like William Hinson's

1:13:19

website when we go. Every

1:13:23

week. Every week. Just

1:13:25

be sad, sadness. Yeah,

1:13:28

I mean, I'm just, I'm opening, I'm opening

1:13:30

Paul's website here in the background

1:13:32

and, yeah, he's,

1:13:36

he's got Paul on Denny Lane and then you

1:13:38

scroll down and he's got... Tony Bennett.

1:13:41

Yeah, Tony Bennett and all these things and they're

1:13:43

all very heartfelt and it just

1:13:45

goes to show the reach of the man but it's,

1:13:48

it's a big ask and he

1:13:50

just keeps on going, you know. He's

1:13:53

with Mick Jagger and they

1:13:55

said to him, you know, it must have been very difficult when

1:13:58

Charlie Watts passed away and he said, Yeah, yeah,

1:14:00

you know, he was more than a bandmate. He was a

1:14:02

friend. And they said,

1:14:04

well, I suppose you're at that age

1:14:06

now where your

1:14:08

peer group are dying.

1:14:12

And Jagger said, yeah, that's why I don't hang out

1:14:14

with my peer group. I just hang out with young

1:14:16

people. Because they're not going to die

1:14:18

before me. And I thought,

1:14:20

well, yeah, we're in that. It's the

1:14:23

decade of mass extinction

1:14:26

of that rock royalty we're sort of entering

1:14:28

in. I said it was

1:14:31

a decade. But I think it's stretching,

1:14:33

thankfully. And a lot of them are

1:14:35

still with us. But I think, yeah, we've got

1:14:37

to kind of live up to that. We've got

1:14:39

to brace ourselves for what's coming. I saw that

1:14:41

Jagger interview. I thought it was a fantastic interview.

1:14:43

I can't remember the interview, but we'll post the

1:14:45

link on all the rest of it. It was

1:14:47

a very good interview. And yeah, you

1:14:49

and me, way back in the before times, back

1:14:51

in 2015, we did a podcast with

1:14:54

our friend Dave for the

1:14:56

Afterward. And we posted, posited this

1:14:58

notion of the decade of

1:15:00

mass extinction. And the notion was that between 2015

1:15:02

and 2025, we

1:15:05

were going to see a wave of deaths. And

1:15:07

we kind of, my

1:15:09

memory of that was that we talked about

1:15:11

the legacy of people like Paul and Dylan.

1:15:14

And in the end, we've lost people like

1:15:16

Prince and Bowie and Tom Petty. The people

1:15:18

who have died in that time aren't even,

1:15:20

we still have Paul

1:15:23

and Bob and Mick on the

1:15:25

road. Incredibly. Yeah,

1:15:27

the death of Charlie Watts was hard. But yeah,

1:15:29

that Mick interview was very striking and very human,

1:15:31

I thought. Because it's very odd to say to

1:15:33

somebody who's 80, hey, what

1:15:36

do you think of 80-year-olds dying? Like, yeah.

1:15:39

You wouldn't do that to an 80-year-old you know.

1:15:43

I think it's very cool that all of these people,

1:15:47

that they do loom so large. Because

1:15:49

if you think about, I'm essentially the

1:15:52

age that the Beatles were while

1:15:55

they were the Beatles. And

1:15:57

do you think that they

1:15:59

were? were reminiscing

1:16:02

and when all

1:16:04

of these pop culture people

1:16:07

were going on to the next ways

1:16:10

during that period of time, there wasn't that many ...

1:16:12

I shouldn't say there weren't that many

1:16:17

... How

1:16:20

do I phrase this? How do I phrase this? Were

1:16:23

they sitting there and bemoaning when Mrs. Mills passed

1:16:25

away? I

1:16:28

... The two big Christmas songs that

1:16:30

are playing on the radio at

1:16:33

present in this part of the world are

1:16:36

Slaves, Merry Christmas Everybody and

1:16:39

Wizards, I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day. Both

1:16:41

those songs came out on the exact same day in

1:16:43

1973, so they are 50 years old.

1:16:48

They are perennial. Yeah. I

1:16:50

don't think in 1973 people

1:16:52

were listening with the same

1:16:54

ears to the music of 1923 or the

1:16:58

acts or the culture of 1923. There

1:17:00

has been very odd blurring

1:17:02

over the last 50 to 70 years of

1:17:05

popular culture where the longevity of it

1:17:07

and the mixed with the access to

1:17:09

it has meant that it lives

1:17:12

in a different way. It's

1:17:16

remarkable to me that particularly

1:17:18

Bob Dylan, who really is just going to die

1:17:21

with his boots on it seems, he's just going

1:17:23

to tour and play

1:17:25

and tour. My

1:17:28

God, he's the real deal. Yeah.

1:17:31

He is the real

1:17:33

deal. I will

1:17:36

defend the suggestion that

1:17:38

Rough and Righty Waze is as good as anything

1:17:40

he's ever done. I think it's a sensational

1:17:43

album. I think it's my favourite

1:17:45

thing. It's

1:17:47

insane that somebody with that

1:17:49

back catalogue can still

1:17:52

produce something. I did a thing with

1:17:55

your friend of mine, Ralph McLean, recently

1:17:57

about Bob Dylan, about Blood on the

1:17:59

Track. And that

1:18:01

was seen as a remarkable

1:18:04

comeback that Dylan at that point

1:18:06

in sort of 74-75 was

1:18:10

seen as the previous decade.

1:18:13

The artist of the previous decade and

1:18:16

no artist was expected to repeat the

1:18:19

highs of their sort of 20s when they

1:18:22

are driven what we like to call the

1:18:24

Hinson years. That

1:18:28

they won't, there's no second act like

1:18:31

that. And Blood

1:18:33

on the Tracks was regarded in that way. That

1:18:36

was the big second act. And

1:18:39

here we are 50 years on from Blood

1:18:41

on the Tracks and he's produced something else.

1:18:44

It's like a fourth or fifth or sixth

1:18:46

act in Dylan's career and I don't think

1:18:48

anybody has done that. From, you

1:18:50

know, not Paul, not John, not George,

1:18:52

not the Stones. Nobody

1:18:55

has produced anything as vital as the

1:18:58

music they were producing in their

1:19:00

20s except for Dylan. Yeah.

1:19:03

But to tie it back to the late

1:19:06

great Denny Lane, you know, he is still

1:19:08

someone who made this his life

1:19:10

and he was still playing gigs up until 2023.

1:19:13

He was, you know, in his late

1:19:15

70s he was still connected to

1:19:18

the music, still bringing the music and, you know, the notion

1:19:20

of rock music when it started was that it was a

1:19:22

young man's game and you couldn't play it past 30 or

1:19:24

past 40. But

1:19:26

he was also a laugher. Yeah,

1:19:29

that's true. I mean, in a different way. He

1:19:32

is the journeyman. He's the

1:19:34

side man. I think his

1:19:36

relationship with Paul, I think he was

1:19:38

unfortunate that, you

1:19:41

know, he and Paul, Paul

1:19:43

used the expression drifted apart. You

1:19:45

know, there was quite a severe severing

1:19:48

of that relationship. I

1:19:50

don't know how that

1:19:53

they had drifted back together again. I mean, I

1:19:55

think it's interesting that Paul seems to have a

1:19:57

very good relationship with Denny so well. But

1:20:02

the one thing that was

1:20:04

very kind of heartening was that Denny

1:20:07

Lane's widow put

1:20:10

out a statement thanking everybody for

1:20:12

all of their support and all that

1:20:15

they had done and particularly thanked Paul

1:20:17

who she said was one of

1:20:19

the first and the most generous

1:20:21

people to get in touch when

1:20:23

it became clear that Denny was ill, there was

1:20:26

a go-front-me page, there was going to be a concert, there

1:20:28

was going to be a... and I thought that's

1:20:31

very nice to hear that Paul was there and

1:20:33

that there was that reconnection at that point. That

1:20:35

does seem to have been the case that Paul

1:20:38

kind of stepped up and helped out and why

1:20:40

wouldn't you? It was sad that there wasn't an

1:20:42

opportunity in the last 20 years of Paul on

1:20:44

the road for Denny to jump on stage but

1:20:47

I also think that Paul

1:20:49

could not do wings without Linda and

1:20:51

so I kind of forgive him for

1:20:53

that but I have

1:20:55

noticed that he now

1:20:57

mentions Denny in concert so since

1:20:59

Denny has passed away there is

1:21:02

now a shout-out to Denny Lane

1:21:04

every night it seems in his

1:21:06

gigs on his current tour which

1:21:08

is only right and just I

1:21:10

suppose. Let's

1:21:14

change the subject a little bit. We've

1:21:16

talked Beatles now for about 17 hours. Let's

1:21:18

ask the question of some generic

1:21:20

things. We've

1:21:23

talked a lot about Hackney Diamonds. Was there

1:21:26

any other music this year, Stephen or William,

1:21:28

that took your fancy? I

1:21:30

have a big list. Okay,

1:21:32

then read your list. Okay,

1:21:34

I have something for the dads which

1:21:37

is the Rolling Stones Hackney

1:21:39

Diamonds and Paul Simon's Seven

1:21:41

Sams. Yes. I

1:21:44

haven't gone back to Seven Sams. I think I

1:21:47

very much like the idea and

1:21:49

I like the precision of it.

1:21:53

I listened to it twice. Are you listening to it a

1:21:55

lot? I listen to it a lot

1:21:57

and I can tell you the first time I listened to this

1:21:59

was in. in the car sitting outside

1:22:02

the train station in

1:22:05

Belfast waiting for William Hinson

1:22:07

to get off the bus

1:22:09

replacement service from Dublin. So

1:22:12

it provokes a lot of

1:22:14

memories and themes of mortality.

1:22:18

Happy memories and themes of mortality.

1:22:22

And where was I coming from? You were

1:22:24

coming from Dublin. Yay! Yeah,

1:22:27

I really do like this album and I

1:22:31

find it, I don't want to say, I mean

1:22:33

if I say I find it difficult to listen to it,

1:22:35

I just, the fact that it was one continuous piece of

1:22:37

music was slightly odd but the

1:22:39

more that I listened to it, the more I

1:22:41

think there is a terrible sense of it being

1:22:44

a summing up because you get little folk callbacks

1:22:46

to sort of things that sound a bit like

1:22:49

Angie that he did very early on. But

1:22:53

I just find it fascinating and

1:22:55

I have listened to it quite a lot. So

1:22:57

I think those are the two for

1:22:59

the dads. I'm

1:23:02

going to mention a band that William might

1:23:05

know called Super Violet and

1:23:08

an album called Infinite Spring which

1:23:11

is kind of

1:23:14

the American band but the kind

1:23:16

of teenage fan club, a little bit

1:23:18

more acoustic-y, little bit, this

1:23:20

one song called Big Songbirds Don't Cry

1:23:22

which is kind

1:23:25

of like the guitar from the Prudence.

1:23:27

So I recommend it, really really great

1:23:29

album. I'm going to mention a

1:23:32

band called Witch, W-I-T-C-H.

1:23:36

Okay. And their

1:23:38

album is called Zango and they're an

1:23:40

African band and really good.

1:23:43

And I'm going to mention two bands that are

1:23:45

connected with the podcast. One

1:23:48

is Warrington Runcore New Time

1:23:50

Development which

1:23:55

is a sort of electronic and

1:23:58

I don't want to get very lazy to say, oh it's a Zango band. just

1:24:00

like Kraftwerk. But if you

1:24:02

like Kraftwerk, if you like that kind of thing, it

1:24:05

fills me with a sense of dread, this music.

1:24:09

It's not a kind of party mix. Is

1:24:12

it kind of hauntology-esque? Is it kind

1:24:14

of in that genre? Yeah, it's kind

1:24:16

of just unsettling, but in a very

1:24:18

entertaining way. And

1:24:21

William Henson, Turn Your Friend

1:24:23

Inside Out, which I

1:24:25

thought, William has sent me a link to

1:24:27

this album, I'm going to have to listen to it, and then

1:24:29

I'm going to have to kind of say, yeah, this is

1:24:32

great. And I seriously, I find

1:24:35

myself listening to it just constantly

1:24:38

on repeat in the car,

1:24:40

in the community. It is such a good album. We

1:24:43

should give a shout out to William Henson's. It's not

1:24:46

called Turn Your Friend Upside Down, it's called Turn Your

1:24:48

Friend Inside Out, which does keep

1:24:50

saying Turn Your Friend Upside Down. It

1:24:52

makes Steven's teeth water. The OCD-ness that

1:24:55

it doesn't run. But yeah,

1:24:57

congratulations, William on Turn Your Friend Inside

1:24:59

Out. And if you've been warmed by

1:25:01

any of the singles to date, which

1:25:03

I was, yeah, it's a top listen.

1:25:05

It's obviously your favourite album of the

1:25:07

year, William, as well. Certainly

1:25:10

not bad, but I do appreciate that

1:25:12

very much, fellas. That means a great

1:25:14

deal, especially

1:25:17

coming from Steven, because Steven is- He's hard

1:25:19

to please. Basically, you hate

1:25:21

everything, so yeah. By

1:25:25

two, apart from Nine Then, Mess

1:25:28

It Up by The Stones, which I think is

1:25:30

just such a great track.

1:25:33

My favourite bit in Mess It Up

1:25:35

is where he goes, seduce your landlord,

1:25:38

which makes me laugh every time. That's

1:25:40

the worst thing someone could do, is

1:25:42

seduce their landlord. My

1:25:44

third top three song is Fun

1:25:46

Employment. I think that is such

1:25:48

a great song of William's album.

1:25:51

So there you go. Thank

1:25:53

you. And the whole

1:25:55

handouts. got

1:26:00

a restraining order against myself. Exactly.

1:26:04

What have you been listening to William? What's

1:26:06

your pick of the year outside of your

1:26:08

own stuff? A couple of records really, really,

1:26:10

really stood out. Certainly

1:26:13

I would say my number one was

1:26:16

In the End It Always Does by

1:26:18

a UK artist called The Japanese

1:26:20

House. She

1:26:23

is so fantastic. And

1:26:26

I got to

1:26:28

see her in I guess

1:26:30

it was October or November?

1:26:33

No, it was November. It was like right before the record came out.

1:26:37

Yeah, that is just such a fabulous record.

1:26:41

And then another UK artist

1:26:43

named Eloise put out a

1:26:45

record called Drunk on a Flight. And

1:26:48

that was a huge part of the early

1:26:51

part of my year. Another

1:26:54

UK artist who is living in the States.

1:26:57

And I've been a fan of him since 2020 actually.

1:27:03

But then remarkably, we have

1:27:06

a mutual friend who

1:27:09

introduced us and he actually came to see me

1:27:11

play when he was still living in LA. But

1:27:13

his name is Dan Kroll and he's from Liverpool.

1:27:17

But he put out a new record called Fools, which

1:27:19

is a great record as well. And

1:27:23

he put that out actually while I was in Ireland with

1:27:25

you guys. Well, yes, can't be right. There's not a single

1:27:27

person on this list over 50. This can't

1:27:29

be right. You've toured internationally this

1:27:31

year, William, of course. It's important to point

1:27:33

that out. Yeah, yeah. I played in Kilkenny

1:27:35

in Ireland. That was a fun gig. And

1:27:38

then I'd also say, of the people

1:27:41

that I don't necessarily know, I would say Be the

1:27:43

Wheel by Theo Katzmann is a great record.

1:27:46

Blue Boy Must Die by No Rome. Young

1:27:49

Hearts by Benny Sings is a great record. The

1:27:52

record by Boy Genius, which I

1:27:55

have mixed feelings about Boy Genius, but I do. There

1:27:57

are some tunes on there that are. fantastic

1:28:02

and then of some

1:28:04

good friends of mine, Noah Flourish

1:28:06

put out a record called

1:28:09

Noah which is very very

1:28:11

very wonderful and he's

1:28:15

he is more wonderful than his record is

1:28:17

actually but his

1:28:19

record is very wonderful and then my good

1:28:22

friends the broken the bluff put out a

1:28:24

record called bluebeard which is also fantastic and

1:28:26

you should all listen to that. I

1:28:29

hope this is making you feel as old

1:28:31

as I feel. I feel I've stumbled onto

1:28:33

I don't know a page on the quietest.

1:28:35

I don't know what anyone's talking about. It

1:28:38

should make you feel very it should

1:28:40

make you feel very hip and young that

1:28:42

you're that you're gonna go take all of

1:28:44

these suggestions and it's

1:28:47

like an up-tempo enthusiastic version of

1:28:49

the mitts for.

1:28:52

I never give a

1:28:54

bap for asking. I'll

1:28:57

just name I don't really have a big list

1:28:59

of albums. The one

1:29:01

that's moving on. What

1:29:03

you got Jason? What you got? Well

1:29:05

we talked about Hackney Diamonds which you know if

1:29:07

you're thinking about well what do I keep popping

1:29:10

on. What I've actually found myself doing

1:29:12

this week is I've been putting it weekly playlists over

1:29:14

on Mastodon which means nobody hears them and

1:29:17

I'm just trying to you know

1:29:20

focus on individual songs and playlists and just kind of

1:29:22

go where the fancy takes me. The one album that

1:29:24

I've really enjoyed the execution of though this year and

1:29:26

the songs and the sound of it and which I

1:29:28

think needs a shout out is Peter Gabriel's I.O. which

1:29:31

I think is a fantastic record and

1:29:33

immaculately put together and he'd been away for so

1:29:36

long I know he'd done a lot of stuff

1:29:38

in the last 20 years but you know I

1:29:40

wasn't really expecting his first open

1:29:43

inverter commas proper close inverter commas album in

1:29:45

20 years to actually have tunes

1:29:47

and meaning and feeling and it's it's as

1:29:49

good as anything he's done and if

1:29:52

people have bought the album it comes in a bright side mix

1:29:54

and a dark side mix the same album the dark side mix

1:29:56

is the one for me and he put

1:29:58

his songs out on a monthly lunar cycle

1:30:00

which I really enjoy and I think

1:30:02

it's a fantastic record and it was

1:30:05

one of the, I

1:30:07

also saw him in concert this year so it was one of the gigs

1:30:09

of the year and I find

1:30:12

less and less I actually haven't bought

1:30:14

a lot of individual albums this year

1:30:16

I've just been listening to random

1:30:18

various streaming stuff and going where the mood

1:30:20

takes me the other thing I'd give a

1:30:22

shout out for reissue wise again I haven't

1:30:24

bought a lot of boxes or reissues but

1:30:27

the Dylan Fragments bootleg series box

1:30:29

set is just sensational and I don't really own

1:30:31

any of their Dylan bootleg box sets because they

1:30:33

always seem a bit like overkill but this is

1:30:35

the box set to go a time out of

1:30:37

mind and again it improves that

1:30:39

I might quite like them not having

1:30:42

the kind of heavy Daniel Lanoir-isms

1:30:44

of the original production so I

1:30:47

think that's quite good and

1:30:49

yeah gig wise I

1:30:51

said I really enjoyed Peter Gabriel

1:30:53

I had a fantastic gig with

1:30:55

Elvis Costello in Dublin back in

1:30:57

September I very much enjoyed that

1:31:00

Ron Seksmith, Robin

1:31:02

Hitchcock, Arctic Monkeys

1:31:05

there were some good shows this year what about

1:31:07

you guys? Yeah I mean I

1:31:09

was at that Costello gig that was much

1:31:11

I went with not high

1:31:14

expectations I'm not sure

1:31:16

why I wasn't sort

1:31:18

of particularly tuned in for that but I

1:31:20

think sometimes if you go with that mindset

1:31:24

it was a fantastic I

1:31:26

saw Mavis Staples for the first time in the

1:31:29

Union Chapel with Dave

1:31:31

and Chris Floyd and

1:31:33

that was a fantastic concert I'd

1:31:35

never been in the venue before

1:31:37

just absolutely gorgeous venue

1:31:40

I was at the Peter Gabriel gig

1:31:42

I was very unsettled by the opening of that

1:31:44

Peter Gabriel Peter Gabriel gig where

1:31:46

they all gathered around a campfire and I thought

1:31:48

oh my god this is gonna be awful

1:31:52

and then they sort of dispensed with that quite

1:31:54

early it just yeah the show I mean

1:31:56

I've seen Peter Gabriel three or four times

1:31:58

now and he certainly does a theatrical

1:32:01

show and this one so

1:32:03

I was trying to avoid set lists and

1:32:05

spoilers and yeah it starts with them around

1:32:07

a theatrical single bulb as a

1:32:09

pseudo campfire and Peter starts the

1:32:12

show with like a lecture he does like

1:32:14

a fine minute talk at the start of

1:32:16

the show and everyone's listening because you should

1:32:18

try that William just

1:32:21

come out and give a human condition give a little

1:32:25

kind of Ted talk before you before you

1:32:27

start I was deeply unsettled by

1:32:30

that but then it just grew and it

1:32:32

was so fantastically put together it

1:32:34

was very well put together I what

1:32:36

I would say is having listened

1:32:39

to the Peter Gabriel album I liked Peter

1:32:41

Gabriel album but my

1:32:43

problem is I bought it I

1:32:45

heard it it wasn't out after

1:32:48

I'd seen those songs performed live

1:32:50

and every single live version of

1:32:52

those songs was to my ears

1:32:54

was better and if I

1:32:56

never hear him sing Biko ever again I would

1:33:00

be yeah I

1:33:02

do agree with that he cuz I thought is the

1:33:04

show over and my wife's like no we've got to

1:33:06

get Biko I'm like oh yeah Biko I'm

1:33:09

afraid to ask William about his gigs of the

1:33:11

year cuz he'll probably say flim flam and the

1:33:13

Terry wellies are something I don't just feel I'll

1:33:16

just have to get my

1:33:18

frame yeah I saw the 1975 in November I currently been

1:33:24

cancelled no they've

1:33:27

been re-uncancelled okay

1:33:29

cancellation happens once a week

1:33:31

these days yeah I saw

1:33:33

them obviously always a great

1:33:35

show the

1:33:38

Japanese house like I said before is great gig I

1:33:41

saw I was on tour with a name

1:33:44

Jordy Circe and he at the same

1:33:46

time was as doing

1:33:49

his headline run was opening for

1:33:52

a guy called Ben rector and so

1:33:54

I got to see him open for Ben as

1:33:57

well as my other friend Stephen Day they

1:33:59

opened For Ben at the Ryman

1:34:01

auditorium in Nashville, and that was a that was

1:34:03

a really wild wild

1:34:05

thing To see that's

1:34:07

a that's a venue. I'd love to get to

1:34:10

something Yeah, it was it was

1:34:12

cool to sit in the dressing room of the

1:34:14

Ryman and have like Johnny Cash on the wall

1:34:16

staring at me I'm

1:34:19

trying to think Theo

1:34:22

Katzman I saw him in

1:34:24

April. It's fantastic. I saw Ben folds

1:34:27

for the first time. Oh, yeah hometown hero

1:34:29

Ben folds he's the only

1:34:31

other musician from Winston-Salem and and

1:34:37

I'll just I'll just say that I saw him.

1:34:39

That's okay. He

1:34:42

canceled his Dublin gig Unfortunately due to tendonitis

1:34:44

so we didn't get to see him. I

1:34:46

think that he means I think he means

1:34:49

well, but He I don't

1:34:51

think he meant well that night He

1:34:54

certainly yeah, he certainly Brings

1:34:57

us whether it's good or bad from the few times

1:34:59

I've seen him sure, you know, and so

1:35:01

any other Cultural highlights this

1:35:03

year Books, I

1:35:06

think beetle book wise is the Mal

1:35:08

Evans book. Have we decided that that's the book of the

1:35:10

year? I'm still digesting it. I haven't gotten

1:35:12

the end of the chest. Yeah, I'm still reading it and

1:35:16

I think I'm kind

1:35:18

of disappointed at the amount of information

1:35:20

that I'm getting from it I

1:35:23

mean, I'm not quite sure what I expected, but

1:35:25

I've just got to the point where the

1:35:27

Beatles have broken up He's having issues with

1:35:30

bad finger I find all that fascinating and

1:35:32

really that to me is more interesting than

1:35:34

who set the fireworks off in Ringo's Garden

1:35:37

in a particular Year

1:35:39

for Guy Fawkes. I think I'm kind

1:35:41

of getting it to the really interesting

1:35:43

part No, which is also

1:35:45

the kind of slightly sad and tragic But

1:35:47

that's yummy Yes,

1:35:50

and of course we've all watched succession and

1:35:52

slow horses and that's space for everyone else's

1:35:55

little horses slow horses Slow

1:35:59

horses for the win I'm right slow horses the

1:36:01

best show on television. Oh

1:36:03

god damn. Yeah, a hundred percent. He's absolutely so

1:36:06

good It's better. It's better than Star Trek Voyager.

1:36:08

I must take a look good God Gary

1:36:12

Oldman can do no wrong. He says confidently

1:36:16

Into the ether Fully

1:36:19

expecting an article in my inbox.

1:36:21

I will say Oh

1:36:24

What's your favorite podcast with you? I

1:36:27

actually yeah, I actually posted this on

1:36:29

on Instagram probably maybe on Twitter as

1:36:31

well I don't know but Get

1:36:33

ready with the eject button, but I put I

1:36:36

put the nothing is real a

1:36:38

Beatles podcast As

1:36:41

my only podcast, although I will say

1:36:43

I have been listening a lot to

1:36:46

Conan needs a friend Which

1:36:49

I just love Conan I

1:36:52

will say too I know This

1:36:55

evening I you we talked

1:36:57

about this but uh, I Really

1:37:00

like the McCartney legacy book.

1:37:04

I do like that book. I like that book

1:37:06

a lot, too I very much enjoyed that book.

1:37:08

I thought it was great I

1:37:10

kind of like the fact that it was half

1:37:12

biography half kind of fact-finding mission and it was

1:37:14

a Chunk of time where

1:37:16

I don't think I'd Excuse

1:37:18

me I don't think I'd appreciate to the chronology of it

1:37:20

in the same way that I had done for

1:37:23

the Beatles universe You know, there's this kind of a

1:37:25

sometimes feels like you fall off an information cliff in

1:37:27

1970 And I really

1:37:29

appreciated what they were doing. I very much enjoyed it.

1:37:31

I know you weren't a massive Massively

1:37:34

sold out at Steven. I haven't

1:37:36

read it. I Gave up. I

1:37:39

got about I got about three or four thousand pages

1:37:41

in I thought

1:37:47

I just can't I can't take this in

1:37:49

and I you know, there's a lot of

1:37:51

information in there It was I

1:37:53

think it was the New York Times or

1:37:55

the New Yorker one

1:37:58

of those New York publications that

1:38:00

said it's just a data

1:38:02

dump and I thought yeah it is and

1:38:04

I was kind of disappointed that there wasn't

1:38:06

a narrative there wasn't a kind of driving

1:38:10

narrative through it which and

1:38:12

it sort of I'm sure it's

1:38:14

not the author's fault but the publishers were

1:38:16

selling it as it's the new

1:38:19

tune-in yeah no it's not

1:38:21

no it's not a new tune-in I think

1:38:23

it's another thing instead

1:38:25

of tune-in and I marketed

1:38:27

in that way I I

1:38:30

would say that it's somewhere above like

1:38:33

the Beatles recording sessions book and

1:38:36

something below tune-in like that because it

1:38:38

is so much like I

1:38:40

said Jason like it is so much

1:38:42

a fact-finding mission and then there's like a

1:38:44

little bit of like man McCartney kind

1:38:47

of a dope dude kind of a dope

1:38:49

dude that's thrown in there and I I mean

1:38:52

honestly yeah it's the same in many ways

1:38:54

I think it's the same reason that a

1:38:56

lot of people listen to

1:38:58

this podcast although there's you know

1:39:01

this podcast is not just a fact-finding mission

1:39:03

they're obviously you know the

1:39:05

40 Alan Klein episodes like you

1:39:07

know a great through-line through all

1:39:09

of those very

1:39:11

very very carefully put together a

1:39:13

podcast the thing

1:39:16

I like least about the the

1:39:18

McCartney like paper oh

1:39:21

right okay wow and if

1:39:23

they want to then we really do I'll

1:39:25

be very happy to help out in any

1:39:28

way I can because I very much like

1:39:30

to say I thought I've I

1:39:32

very much enjoyed how much effort he put

1:39:34

into trying to record high high high the

1:39:36

man who was able to record you know

1:39:38

yesterday I've just seen a face and I'm

1:39:40

down in one three-hour afternoon session was really

1:39:42

mucking away at that track for weeks and

1:39:44

weeks and weeks and it's for

1:39:47

what end I do not know but you

1:39:49

know dynamite weed and all of that kind of

1:39:51

stuff and do you listen to any other

1:39:53

podcasts Steven anything you want to

1:39:55

recommend I listen to the rest

1:39:57

is history of course yes with Tom Hall

1:40:00

Holland, my very good show business.

1:40:02

Showbiz pal. My showbiz pal Tom

1:40:04

Holland. I really, really recommend

1:40:06

it. They've got literally

1:40:09

thousands of episodes. They put out two

1:40:12

episodes a week, every

1:40:14

week. I don't know how they

1:40:16

get anything else done. Yeah, I

1:40:19

mean, I really, really don't give

1:40:21

a spectacular live show. I

1:40:24

saw them in Dublin. They've been in America. They've

1:40:26

been in Australia. If

1:40:29

you look at the episode list, you will find

1:40:32

something that you like. And the

1:40:34

most interesting thing is

1:40:36

that recently they did a

1:40:39

sort of six or seven part series

1:40:41

on the Aztecs and then

1:40:43

a six or seven part series on

1:40:45

JFK. And they've never done

1:40:47

that before. And I like to

1:40:49

think that's the nothing is real influence. Multipart

1:40:53

is history. Multipart episodes

1:40:55

are neither bad. You guys are influencers.

1:40:59

We're influencers. I

1:41:02

want to give a shout out for You Spring and Springsteen

1:41:04

on My Bean, which is a very stupid Bruce Springsteen podcast

1:41:06

that I very much enjoyed this year, along

1:41:08

with Freedom and Comedy Bang Bang. I've

1:41:11

got some nothing is real stats, Stephen. How

1:41:13

many episodes do you think we've done this year? Twelve.

1:41:16

At least sixteen. We've done 52.

1:41:19

We've put out 52 nothing is reals this year.

1:41:21

Three live shows, one Mark Lewis and Interview in

1:41:23

front of an audience and one radio series for

1:41:25

BBC Radio Ulster available on BBC

1:41:27

Sounds. Well, one this year and one last

1:41:29

year. So we've now got two series of

1:41:31

Give Ireland Back, which

1:41:34

you should all check out. The first series is all

1:41:36

about The Beatles and the second series we're looking at

1:41:38

Kate Bush and Nirvana and The Smiths and Who Am

1:41:40

I Forgetting? Oasis. BBC

1:41:43

Sounds, Give Ireland Back and it's

1:41:46

available not wherever you get your podcasts,

1:41:48

but wherever you get your BBC shows, which is BBC Sounds.

1:41:51

So we should. That's true. That's

1:41:53

a year's work. And how

1:41:55

many times were you mentioned in The New York

1:41:57

Times? We were mentioned once in The New

1:41:59

York Times. which is very sweet. We were

1:42:01

mentioned once by Charlie Brooker which out

1:42:04

of all the things that have you know inexplicably

1:42:07

happened to the podcast in the last couple of

1:42:09

years and we're always grateful and we're always

1:42:11

very thankful there was definitely a Charlie Brooker effect

1:42:13

when Charlie Brooker mentioned us in The Guardian

1:42:15

as the podcast he likes to fall asleep to

1:42:17

and certainly got

1:42:20

me a kudos from my

1:42:22

kids because I said he's the man who writes Philomena

1:42:24

Kunk and they all thought that was

1:42:26

quite cool and Johnny Marr gave us a

1:42:28

shout out as well and that was also very very

1:42:31

strange that the one degree of

1:42:33

separation from Johnny Marr. All

1:42:36

of those things happened within a sort

1:42:38

of three week period it was a

1:42:40

very strange three week period. It was

1:42:42

very strange. Very strange altogether. You would

1:42:44

swear we had a publicist but we

1:42:46

don't we just don't. The

1:42:49

hints and effect. Maybe

1:42:52

we should get a publicist anyway but that's

1:42:54

not necessary. We always end our end of

1:42:56

year review shows by asking you to we've

1:42:58

been asking people to send in their questions

1:43:00

because it's getting quite late now on Christmas

1:43:03

Day and you know we need to go

1:43:05

to bed but separate

1:43:09

beds. This isn't more common

1:43:11

wise and so what

1:43:13

we've done is we've collated the questions

1:43:15

and because producer Aido has been unable

1:43:17

to make it this evening he's stuck in

1:43:19

a snowdrift. You

1:43:22

have a selection of questions there William which

1:43:25

you are free to put to us in

1:43:27

any sort of random order. Choose

1:43:30

the ones you find most interesting or least

1:43:32

interesting or dig them

1:43:34

out and hit us with them and

1:43:36

me and Stephen will give our spontaneous

1:43:39

Christmas opinions on these things. This

1:43:43

one comes from

1:43:45

PatienceMall at PatienceMall6.

1:43:50

This is a freebie. Why is

1:43:52

Broad Street so good? Excellent

1:43:56

question PatienceMall6. I

1:43:59

can answer that crowd. I thought you

1:44:02

were going to say, because I haven't

1:44:05

seen it, Stephen who still has not

1:44:09

submitted himself, I think would have to be

1:44:11

doing clockwork orange style with the little hooks

1:44:14

in the eyelids to

1:44:16

watch Broad Street. Broad Street is so good,

1:44:18

I think it's

1:44:21

the magical mystery tour of Paul's solo

1:44:23

career and we need to just embrace

1:44:25

it and enjoy the musical sequences and

1:44:27

it's just bizarre and unusual and like

1:44:30

the other things we've talked about, it shouldn't

1:44:33

be swept under the rug, it should just be

1:44:35

put out there, let's just get on with it.

1:44:37

We're all grown ups, gosh damn it. Except

1:44:40

William. Well,

1:44:43

someday I'll grow

1:44:45

into a big boy. I

1:44:49

will say, and you guys can cut this or you can

1:44:51

save it for, maybe

1:44:54

you can save this for

1:44:56

your eventual inevitable Broad Street

1:44:58

episode, but when I was

1:45:00

in Belfast with

1:45:03

Stephen we had a conversation about how

1:45:05

deeply that impacted Paul's,

1:45:08

not only his career but

1:45:10

him personally where he progressed

1:45:12

to the 80s. Totally, yeah.

1:45:15

Yeah, okay here we go.

1:45:18

Which is a better Beatles song now and then

1:45:20

or double back alley? Who's

1:45:23

that from? Oh, I think that's

1:45:25

from Dave Dogface Boy. That is

1:45:27

from Dave Dogface Boy. Yes, Dave,

1:45:29

Dave and his Rutles references. Well,

1:45:33

we've discussed now and then, I mean the Rutles

1:45:35

are fantastic. I had

1:45:37

Let's Be Natural playing in the car

1:45:39

on the way home this evening. I've been going

1:45:41

through a big Bonzo dog band phase because there's

1:45:44

a massive Bonzo dog box

1:45:47

set due next year and I was

1:45:49

playing them, I was

1:45:52

playing the Keynesian Hub and wherever the country

1:45:54

is, there's a brilliant song on that called What Do

1:45:56

You Do? Which is an e-line song

1:45:58

which sounds like it's... predating Sounds

1:46:02

like the Boo Radleys or something like that

1:46:04

and so yeah, it's

1:46:06

all good But I'm ready to spend a

1:46:08

lot of money next year on this party

1:46:11

behemoth bonzo dog box set that's coming the

1:46:14

answer to the question is double back alley is is

1:46:17

a more beatily song than nine down double

1:46:19

back alley is a fantastic

1:46:22

fantastic song Okay,

1:46:25

this is from Michelle Murtaugh Ah

1:46:30

It's an I our stuff herself in I her

1:46:32

stuff My

1:46:34

Christmas question is what was the best

1:46:36

thing or the thing you enjoyed most

1:46:39

about doing the live shows in Belfast

1:46:42

Dublin and London Just

1:46:46

meeting the people right Steven just getting

1:46:48

out there meeting the fans man meeting

1:46:51

the fan autographs famous groupies

1:46:54

Yeah, just the hordes of crowds

1:46:56

the screaming girls the

1:46:58

in-store signing and it was a very

1:47:00

surreal experience I have to admit and

1:47:06

Well Without

1:47:09

going into deep and meaningful stuff my father

1:47:11

passed away in October And so I ended

1:47:13

up doing the shows in the back of

1:47:15

all of that and all of that was kind of odd and

1:47:18

strange for me, so Yeah,

1:47:21

it's all kind of mixed up in all of that time

1:47:23

I don't think I've processed any of these things yet to

1:47:25

tell you the truth But

1:47:27

I was kind of amazed that people

1:47:30

turned out and paid good money to come and

1:47:32

listen to us and it was very humbling and

1:47:34

lovely and Everybody seemed

1:47:37

to be really nice. I think is what

1:47:39

I would say I Would

1:47:41

agree with that and although we're kind of joking

1:47:43

about, you know meeting the fans man I think

1:47:46

it was weird that people

1:47:48

people traveled these are traveled from Germany

1:47:50

to Dublin Yeah, just to see the

1:47:52

show, you know, there were people

1:47:55

came from Scotland. It was very very odd to

1:47:58

be on a stage and think the people had come

1:48:01

to hear what we had to say. It

1:48:03

was great. I really enjoyed it. And yeah,

1:48:05

I think actually meeting people that in

1:48:08

real life that you only had interacted

1:48:10

with online. They

1:48:13

exist. They're real people. You

1:48:15

know, it was the first time I'd interacted

1:48:17

in real life with people I'd met in

1:48:19

online who didn't actually

1:48:21

have an OnlyFans account. Okay,

1:48:23

this is from Nemo. What

1:48:25

are the top five Beatles

1:48:32

related locations you have visited? Ah

1:48:35

yes, I saw this question going around online.

1:48:39

Abbey Road, Liverpool, the

1:48:41

Cavern, where else? I still have to do the

1:48:43

Hamburg thing. Where

1:48:48

else? I don't know. Abbey Road is quite strange

1:48:50

and when I lived in London, you know, I

1:48:52

lived there for seven or eight years and you

1:48:55

know when you're driving around and you have to, you

1:48:57

know, your travels take you past Abbey Road, it's

1:48:59

very funny that it's just a functioning part of

1:49:01

the city and you

1:49:04

know you can just turn on the webcam and see

1:49:06

people crossing it at any time of day but you're

1:49:08

also trying to get somewhere. Yeah.

1:49:12

I think and of course visiting the inside

1:49:14

of Abbey Road as well. What about you Stephen? Yeah,