NEW BOOK : The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive

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The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive
Posted by Roger Stormo
Tuesday, July 26, 2016 



Ray Connolly was a journalist friend of the Beatles, who has recently published a paperback book of various writings from over the years. Connolly went to Beatles recording sessions and followed their Magical Mystery Tour around England.
During a visit to Canada in 1969, John Lennon told Connolly that he had left the Beatles. This was months before it was official. Paul McCartney asked Connolly to interview him to explain his side of the break-up. Lennon phoned Connolly to tell him that he was returning his MBE to the Queen, and asked him to break the news. Connolly wrote the manuscript to the "That'll Be The Day" film where Ringo played a character. He was about to fly to New York in December 1980 to interview Lennon, when he got a phone call about the senseless murder of the Beatle. In February 1981, Connolly was one of the first authors to chronicle Lennon's life, in the book John Lennon, 1940-80.

The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive is Connolly's account of the Beatles’ story, a selection of some of his many interviews with them and others connected with them, as well a collection of news stories and reflections that he has published over the past half century in various British national newspapers.
You can get the book from Amazon UK through  this link. Amazon.com has this book as a paperback, as well as on Kindle.

Book facts:
The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive
Paperback: 372 pages
Publisher: Plumray Books (July 17, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0956591531
ISBN-13: 978-0956591531
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds






www.rayconnolly.co.uk
The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive

Category: Beatles File


Ray Connolly

Much of my Beatles journalism has now been collected in "THE Ray Connolly BEATLES ARCHIVE" which is now available on Amazon.

"THE  Ray Connolly BEATLES ARCHIVE"

Most books about the Beatles are by writers who never met them. I was lucky. I was a journalist and I was there. I knew all of them, John Lennon confiding in me during a visit to Canada that he’d left the Beatles four months before it became public knowledge, and later Paul McCartney asking me to interview him so that he could explain his side of the break-up.

Before that I went to Beatles’ recording sessions at the Abbey Road studios, knew their wives, visited the homes of three of them, and perhaps over-regularly hung around their London base at Apple playing their demos. In the front row at George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh in Madison Square Gardens, I also followed the Magical Mystery Tour around England’s West Country, and when John decided to send his MBE back to the Queen it was me he phoned to break the news. Later, when he lived in New York, there would be letters from him, while Ringo had the second lead in a movie I wrote called That’ll Be The Day. Then in December 1980 I was about to take a plane to New York to interview John when I got the phone call to me he’d been murdered.

This isn’t a biography of the Beatles. There are enough of those already. Nor is it a dissertation on their music or an analysis of their lyrics. There are even more of those.

It is 100,000 words of my story of the Beatles, a selection of some of my many interviews with them and others connected with them, as well as articles, reviews, news stories and reflections that I’ve published over the past forty four years in various British national newspapers. There are also several pieces that are being published here for the first time.

Not all the articles are exactly as they were when first written. Hindsight is wonderful, and nearly every piece needed a paragraph or two of scene setting and then another for consequences. I suppose if this were an album it might be described as a remix, as some articles have been cut back when I thought they were too long, while others have been extended when, for one reason for another, I’d originally had to leave things out.

Among the previously unpublished interviews are one with John when he reflects on his songs, another with Cynthia Lennon talking about their marriage, and a very recent one with record producer Sir George Martin. Inevitably in a compendium of articles there is some repetition of information and quotations, but as it isn’t envisaged that the chapters of this book will necessarily be read in chronological order, I hope readers will bear with that.

Chronicling the music, lives and careers of the Beatles as events were unfolding around them, and seeing the effects the Beatles had upon my generation and those that followed has never been a less than fascinating part of my own career. And believe me, I do realise how lucky I was to find myself with such extraordinary access to some of the most talented and famous people in the world.

Ray Connolly,
May 2011



List Of Contents

1962-1966: A Fan’s Story
1967: Joining the Beatles’ circus
1967: The Magical Mystery Tour: ‘Maybe we goofed,’ says Paul
1968: Paul on home, culture and Lady Madonna
1968: Ringo home from meditating: ‘It was just like Butlins’
1968: Ringo: ‘Sometimes I go to John’s house and play with his toys and sometimes he comes and plays with mine’
1968: Apple boutique…from take-away to give-away?
1968: The enigmatic Yoko
1968: The White Album
1969-1971: Great and turbulent times at Apple
1968: ‘If George leaves, he leaves,’ John during the unhappy filming of Let It Be
1969: On the roof - the last gig
1969: Paul marries Linda and John marries Yoko
1969: The Ballad of John and Yoko
1969: There are various ways of doing business and there’s Allen Klein’s way
1969: Elvis, Dylan, John and me
1969: Paul talks about Abbey Road…the album
1969: ‘Paul is dead’ and John’s MBE goes back to the Queen
1969: The day the Beatles died
1969: ‘I’ve left the Beatles…’ said John
1969: A weekend in Canada with the Lennons
1970: ‘You’re the journalist, not me…’ said John
1970: Paul on ‘Why the Beatles broke up’
1970: A note about George
1970: John and the Ignoble Alf
1970: John talking about his songs
1970: John… ‘performing flea’ or ‘crutch for the world’s social lepers’
1971: Beatles in court
1971: George and the Concert for Bangladesh
1971: Imagine that’s the B-side
1971: John and Yoko’s early days in New York
1970-72: Michael X and John
1972: No more ‘Four gods on stage’
1972: Ringo in the movie That’ll Be The Day
1972: Paul on how he turned down John’s invitation for them to play together again
1973-74: The Lost Weekend
1979: Paul and his favourite songs
1980: Japanese Jailbird
1980: December 7
1980: Unimaginable
1980: Mark Chapman and what turns a fan into a killer
1985: The story of ‘Working Class Hero’…my movie that never was
1987: Twenty years after Sergeant Pepper…hit and myth?
1995: Paul talks about the Beatles Anthology
1998: Linda McCartney 1941-1998
1998: The story of Paul and Linda
1999: The Cavern… ‘That’s the youngest tramp I’ve ever seen’
1999: Paul back at the Cavern
1999: George is stabbed
2000: John, the FBI and MI5
2000: Hospitals, gangs, drums and Ringo
2000: Has Yoko whitewashed John’s image?
2001: George the reluctant Beatle 1943-2001
2002: Paul in Las Vegas
2002: Liverpool Dr Winston O'Boogie Airport
2005: Mal Evans - the gentle giant
2006: ‘That was so cruel, inhuman…’ Cynthia Lennon
2006: Whatever happened to Ringo?
2007: Pete Best…the man with a knife in his back
2009: My lost Beatle interviews
2009: A degree in Beatleology
2010: ‘Save Abbey Road’
2010: Lennon the Unfunny!
2011: Produced by George Martin
Afterword: ‘What if…?’