by Gary Pig Gold
Just in case you haven’t
already been listening over the past sixty-some-odd years, Eagle Rock
Entertainment’s Produced
By George Martin documentary demonstrates once again, via a wealth of
vintage clips and contemporary interviews with clients past (Paul McCartney,
Cilla Black, Jeff Beck, Bernard Cribbins even) and protégés present-day (Rick
Rubin, T-Bone Burnett) the sheer magnitude of the man’s sonic innovations on,
and indelible contributions to, the music industry. Or what remains of it, I
should say.
All of which got this lifelong
record buff thinking, for not the first time mind you, what exactly our aural
lives would have, could have been
like if we dared Go Metric in, dare I even imagine it, A WORLD WITHOUT
GEORGE….
1953: Already well known to
radio enthusiasts throughout Britain as “the funniest man this side of Lord
Mountbatten,” Peter Sellers of the rightfully legendary Goon Show is urged by both his mother and others in command to
expand his talents and notoriety into the world of spoken word recording. He
naturally approaches all-powerful EMI’s comedy division, Parlophone Records, in
search of a contract but, despite a riveting audition which apparently included
a 20-minute rendition of his trademark “My Old Man’s a Dustbin,” Sellers is
turned down.
Dejected and despondent, the
man inexplicably soon after retires from the Goons at the very height of their
renown, only to troll about the nether regions of the UK music hall circuit
performing tired ventriloquist routines (“Birdie Num Num” being the most, um,
notable) before bottoming out altogether, touring American Air Force bases in
North Africa as part of a Wee Willie Winkie tribute act then perishing,
penniless, beneath a Clacton-on-Sea fun fair helter skelter.
“If only a producer of rare
insight and courage had been there in 1953 to offer the man a long-term
recording contract,” lifetime Sellers acolyte Stanley Kubrick once said, “the
world of comedy records, not to mention World War III movie satires, would have
been completely different.”
1962: Agreeing only after a
flood of pleading telegrams and phone calls to finally take a meeting with
northern England’s most powerful record retailer, Brian Epstein of NEMS, the
EMI Studios on Abbey Road NW8 is visited by an unruly quartet of Liverpool
“beat musicians” who proceed to audition for Parlophone brass with a
bewildering repertoire of Fats Waller and Ethel Merman numbers. Although the
band’s drummist impresses all with not only his percussive prowess but a
smoldering mean, moody magnificence, staff producer Ron Richards nevertheless
declines to offer the group a recording contract.
However, such was the severity
of manager Epstein’s insistence (not to mention caterwauling upon the studio
floor) that EMI bowed to audition the following month another band from the
man’s talent stable. This group too
was a quartet fresh from Liverpool’s Cavern Club, yet possessed such an
overwhelmingly obvious charm and mastery of their craft that they were
immediately signed to a generous, life-clad contract with EMI’s prestigious
Columbia label. Within a year, after making history topping the charts with
their first three British releases, Gerry Marsden and crew carried on to
America where their February, 1964 appearance on the Soupy Sales Show drew a record-breaking audience of 7300, launching
what we now know as the Pacemaker Invasion of the world’s radio, television and
movie screens.
Richards went on to supervise the band’s landmark Our World performance of “Ferry Cross the Mersey” in 1967, part of
the first-ever live, globally-televised satellite bingo competition. Tragically
however, a year later Gerry met and married a well-to-do Canadian optometrist
and emigrated to picturesque Port Credit, Ontario, where to this day he runs a
profitable pet supply boutique.
Nevertheless, the revolutionary effect and impact the Pacemakers had upon the
entertainment industry during the 1960s will be felt for as long as people have
ears and, of course, disposable cash to spend collecting vintage Merseybeat
records.
1964: Prior to the release
of the third film in their box-office-busting James Bond series, producers
Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli approach EMI with a demo for its title
song, “Goldfinger,” in search of a producer and suitable singer for the theme.
Norrie Paramor, already having scored impressive chart action with Cliff
Richard and the Shadows, agreed to supervise the “Goldfinger” project and duly
enlisted singer Tessie O’Shea to be featured vocalist.
Often cited as one of the, in
music scribe Rock Serling’s words, “most unlikely and ill-conceived matches
between song and singer since Phil Collins slaughtered the Supremes,” the
Paramor-produced “Goldfinger” was quickly, and wisely, excised from the film.
Nevertheless, a decade later Broccoli again returned to the scene of the crime
with a Paul McCartney-composed theme for the Live and Let Die film. This time, EMI turned the project over to
staff producer Norman “Hurricane” Smith, fresh off worldwide success with his
own "Oh Babe, What Would You Say?" Yet the resultant John
Davidson-sung “Live and Let Die” was considered such a musical and cinematic misstep that some believe
releasing even the McCartney and Wings version instead would have been less
disastrous for all concerned.
1975: Increasingly desperate
to reclaim the prestige of their previous acclaim, both former Yardbird Jeff
Beck and noted Crosby, Stills, Nash and/or Young impersonators America found
themselves fully, fatefully floundering ‘round the rock ‘n’ roll Babylon which
was mid-Seventies Los Angeles, in search of a producer they could call their
own. At least for a while.
Beck for some reason was advised to cover the iconoclastic Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats album in full. But, such was
the man’s propensity for playing seventeen notes where one would suffice, the
project soon spread across two full
very-long-playing records, the aptly-named Blow
by Blow and its multi-trillion-dollar, John Belushi-fuelled follow-up Wired. Despite the latter being
successfully adapted into both book and film form during the equally empty
Eighties, Beck was never again to taste the heights he once did, and was last
heard trying to accompany Beached Boy Brian Wilson’s latest “come back!” tour.
America si
milarly lost the plot, both musically and mentally, with their
alliterally cute (but little else) Holiday,
Hearts, Hideaway and Harbor
trilogy [sic!] before embarking upon their mammoth Hasbeen record/book/holographic revue in 1977, which instantly lost
heaps more money than even Heaven’s Gate.
Naturally, “thank God for the Ramones” was happily hereafter the harmonious hum
of hip, highnote hearsay heard at this most harrowing hour in human history.
Ha!
1982: Already a charter
member of sometime-Monkee M. Nesmith’s International Association of People Who
Won’t Go Away, Paul McCartney resurfaced in the wake of his former partner’s
assassination with a wry ditty extolling the virtues of both race relations and
piano keyboards. Originally envisioning no less than Stevie Wonder as his duet
partner, McCartney’s producers recommended he align himself instead with the
burgeoning Celtic/trance pigeonhole in an attempt to move tons more 12-inch
slabs of polyvinyl.
The resultant “Ebony and Dexedrine,” recorded alongside British anti-soul band
Dexys Midnight Runners, naturally turned out to be amongst Macca’s prodigious
bevy of worst-received, worst-ever-selling records. “If only a producer of rare
insight and courage had been there to slap me upside the noggin,” master pop
purveyor McCartney later said, “the world of race relations, not to mention my
musical legacy, would have been completely different.”