www.liverpoolecho.co.uk Daniel Craig, Benedict Cumberbatch and Ringo Starr - here is how you can buy celebs personal items and it's all for a good cause You can buy Ringo Starr's personal drum skins to Daniel Craig's script all in the name of charity By Lottie Gibbons 30 APR 2018 Constellations Constellations is hosting an exhibition, art sale and launch of an online live auction in which you can buy celebrities personal items. The auction will include items from Daniel Craig, Benedict Cumberbatch , Ringo Star, Raph Fiennes, Adrian Dunbar and other celebrity patrons. Among the celebrities prized possessions being auctioned off is one of Ringo Starr's personal signed drum skins, a Daniel Craig signed poster and script and the original dartboard from TV show, 'Shameless'. Launching the online live auction, will be actress Samantha Morton, who has been a supporter of the charity for many years. The event is in aid of Anno's Africa, a UK based charity that offers an alternative, arts education to orphans and vulnerable children in some of Africa's most desperately deprived city slums. Anno's Africa (Image: Bee Gilbert) Guests will also be able to purchase the exhibited art work created by children from Anno's Africa Northern Malawi programme. For entertainment, there will be live music, an African crafts stall and film and photography from the charity's work. Anno's Africa was set up in memory of Anno Birkin a young, gifted writer and musician who died in a car crash in 2001, just one month short of his 21st birthday. Speaking to the charity, Benedict Cumberbatch, said: "I'm thrilled to be supporting Anno's Africa, the charity offers an alternative arts education to children and celebrates what should be the right of any child to imagine, create and find self-confidence and a voice through fun play and learning. "I cannot think of a better legacy for Anno, a beautiful soul I was lucky enough to know sadly all too briefly." Doors open at 7.15pm on Thursday, May 10. Admission is free and bar food is available throughout the evening.
George Harrison, Ravi Shankar & Viji Shankar at Friar Park during rehearsals for Ravi Shankar’s Music Festival From India, 1974. (Photograph by Clive Arrowsmith) beatlesblogger.com George Harrison Estate Launches New Record Label by beatlesblogger Posted on April 28, 2018 The estate of George Harrison has just announced a new record label which will be dedicated to re-issuing some of the Indian classical and World music that George so dearly loved. The label, called HariSongs, is kicking off by making two titles available to stream or download: In Concert 1972, featuring virtuoso’s Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan recorded live at New York’s Philharmonic Hall; and Chants of India, another Ravi Shankar project dating back to 1997. So far there is no talk of any physical product being made available, but there is a brand-spanking and comprehensive new website to go along with the new label. In Concert 1972 was originally released on the Beatles’ Apple Records label in 1973, and was mixed and edited by George Harrison (with Zakir Hussain and Phil McDonald). Chants of India, produced by George Harrison, was originally released in 1997 on the Angel Records label (formerly a classical music division of EMI). It was recorded in Madras, India, and at Harrison’s Friar Park home at Henley-on-Thames in the UK. Both titles are recently out-of-print, and have never before been available via streaming platforms. In Concert 1972 is also available in Hi-Res 96/24 and 192/24 formats. You can read the full details of George’s dedication to and delight in Indian classical music, plus the new record label and releases in the press release issued by the George Harrison Estate here . harisongs.com
London, April 27, 2018 – The George Harrison Estate is happy to announce their new label, HariSongs, created in partnership with Craft Recordings to release Harrison’s archive of Indian Classical and World music and his collaborations with the finest exponents of Indian Classical music.
To celebrate this body of music, HariSongs launches today with two reissues in honour of both Ravi Shankar’s birthday (b. 7th April, 1920) and Ali Akbar Khan’s birthday (b. 14th April, 1922) this month. These titles — both recently out-of-print, and never before available via streaming platforms — are the acclaimed Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan In Concert 1972 and the last collaboration by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar, Chants of India. These digital-only reissues are now available for the first time via streaming outlets, as well as to download (In Concert is also on Hi-Res 96/24 and 192/24 formats).
About In Concert 1972
In Concert 1972 was originally released via Apple Records in 1973, with a statement that read: "Within the small community of Brilliantly Gifted Musicians there exists an even smaller world of Masters. Two of these masters recently joined together in concert ...". The album features two of Indian Classical music's greatest artists at the height of their powers, the sitar maestro Ravi Shankar and master of the sarod, Ali Akbar Khan. The album captures the live recordings from a performance which took place at New York City's Philharmonic Hall on October 8, 1972 and was mixed and edited by George Harrison (with Zakir Hussain and Phil McDonald). Featuring tabla accompaniment by the great Alla Rakha, this mesmerising concert comprises three ragas played in the jugalbandi style (or a duet played by two solo musicians) and became a poignant tribute to the guru of both soloists (and the father of Ali Akbar), the great Allauddin Khan, who had died but a month previously.
Critical praise for In Concert 1972
“This wonderful recording comes from a show at New York's Philharmonic Hall with a dream team: Ali Akbar Khan on sarod and Alla Rakha on tabla. One of the three pieces, 'Raga – Manj Khamaj,' totals almost an hour, enabling you to get much closer than on most Shankar albums of the period, to the natural extension and patient exploration of an Indian classical-music evening."
Rolling Stone
“This is the living, fire-breathing embodiment of one of the greatest partnerships ever forged in Hindustani (Northern Indian) classical music… Two musicians pouring their hearts out for their guru: that is the most succinct description of this sometimes smouldering, sometimes fiery, masterpiece.”
Gramophone Magazine
About Chants of India
Chants of India by Ravi Shankar and produced by George Harrison was originally released in 1997 on Angel Records. Recorded in both Madras, India, and Henley-on-Thames, UK, this collaboration was referred to by Shankar as “one of the most difficult challenges in my life, as a composer and arranger”, and draws upon the sacred Sanskrit texts of the Vedas, Upanishads and other scriptures. He added, “the repetitive use of mantras invoke a special power within oneself and I have tried to imbibe this age-old tradition in this recording... into which I have poured my heart and soul”.
Critical praise for Chants of India
“Perhaps the very best introduction to the enduring creative friendship between the Bengali classical master and the scruff from Liverpool's back streets”
Mojo
"'Chants of India' represents a creative milestone in the life of a veteran artist whose contributions to traditional Indian music cannot be overestimated."
Billboard
"Shankar took Hindu prayers, mantras and scriptural texts and framed them within larger musical settings, incorporating both Indian and European instruments along with voices. The results are transporting – and very beautiful."
NPR Music
DIGITAL TRACK LISTING:
In Concert 1972 Ravi Shankar (sitar) & Ali Akbar Khan (sarod) with Alla Rakha (tabla)
Raga Hem Bihag – 25:18
Raga Manj Khamaj – 51:01
Raga Sindhi Bhairavi – 26:18
Chants of India All songs are traditional, arranged by Ravi Shankar, except where indicated.
Vandanaa Trayee – 4:32
Omkaaraaya Namaha – 1:53
Vedic Chanting One – 3:12
Asato Maa – 7:12
Sahanaa Vavavtu – 4:26
Poornamadah – 1:28
Gaayatri – 3:26
Mahaa Mrityunjaya – 4:43
Veenaa-Murali – 3:36
Geetaa – 2:13
Managalam (original composition by Shankar, Dr Nandakumara) – 4:03
Hari Om (original composition by Shankar) – 2:57
Svara Mantra (original composition by Shankar) – 4:34
Vedic Chanting Two – 2:13
Prabhujee (original composition by Shankar) – 8:06
Sarve Shaam – 5:09
Ravi Shankar teaching George Harrison the sitar, Srinagar, India, 1966.
beatlesblogger.com Brilliant New Beatle Book – Visualizing The Beatles by beatlesblogger Posted on April 28, 2018 They say there are four basic types of learners: those who like to listen (auditory); those who like to take notes and read (reading/writing); those who like to be hands-on (kinaesthetic); and those who prefer to see the information in order to visualise the relationships between ideas (visual). Well, if you fall into the visual camp, then you’re going to love this new Beatle book because on each of its 276 pages it packs a huge amount of data told in a truly unique way: using fantastic infographics. Even if you’re not a “visual” person you’ll love this book for the breadth of the information it contains, and the fun, innovative way it tells the Beatle story anew. There’s really nothing else like it on the market: The book is called Visualizing The Beatles – A Complete Graphic History of the World’s Favorite Band. Not only does it mange to squeeze three US spellings into it’s title, it crams a truly amazing amount of facts, figures, maps, history, stories and information between it’s covers – all told using infographics. Because of this the book forces you to think about the band we all know so well in very different ways, often bringing new understanding to how four young musicians from Liverpool had such an impact on the world. Authors John Pring and Rob Thomas organise their information in a fairly standard fashion – each album in the order it was released, starting with Please Please Me and ending with Let It Be – but the way they go about deconstructing each has a unique telling. As they say in their introductory note: “It is by no means a definitive history of The Beatles. Instead, it is an attempt to create something beautiful, vibrant, and original from the data their music left behind. It is an attempt to present the facts in a way you haven’t seen them before, so you can spot, in an instant, the patterns, anomalies and changes.” There are infographic pages for each LP detailing (amongst many other things): º An album overview º A song lyrics “word map” º Composer º What keys the songs were in º Instruments used º Album design details º Track lengths + original work v. covers º Who took lead vocals? º Success of the album – and any singles released By way of example, here are a couple of pages. The first visually represents the many instruments used – and who played what – on Abbey Road, released in September, 1969: As usual, click on these images to see larger versions. This next page covers off songwriting duties for the 1967 album Magical Mystery Tour: And this page shows the song titles – and the musical keys for each – on Rubber Soul from 1965: Slowly, as you flip through the book, these images build to reveal a unique way of looking at the band’s output. Additionally, there are pages graphically representing things like all their US releases and the chart positions each achieved; a Beatle filmography; there are timelines detailing what else was happening in the world at the time of each album release; what the Beatles were wearing and their hairstyles through each phase of their career; where each album was recorded; tour maps; and key places of interest in the cities they lived in and visited, and much, much more. One particularly interesting map page shows the city of Liverpool with flags dotted across it marking where the band lived in relation to each other; the locations of places like Strawberry Field and Penny Lane; schools and key performance venues from the early days. It is simple, but instantly gives a whole new context by visually representing basic facts from the Beatle story in a brand new way. Visualizing The Beatles by John Pring and Rob Thomas is published by Dey Street Books. It goes on sale in the USA on May 1st. You will definitely learn things you didn’t know about the Beatles. Highly recommended. Visualizing The Beatles is written by lifelong friends John Pring and Rob Thomas.
www.sfctoday.com All Things Must Pass – Why the Beatles Broke Up By David Schoen SFCToday The Beatles were one of the most popular Rock & Roll music groups of all time. The band consisted of John Lennon on guitar, Paul McCartney on bass, George Harrison on additional guitar, and Ringo Starr on percussion. The band flourished in the early- to mid-1960s, growing a passionate following and fan base based upon a global phenomenon known as “Beatlemania.” However, the Beatles began to break-up during the late 1960s, dissolving the group by the end of the decade. The band’s break-up was a long and tumultuous process that developed over a number of years in the late 1960s. The sole cause of their break-up has continuously been debated by modern music critics and popular culture scholars. However, there wasn’t just one cause as to why the band eventually broke up. Rather, the band’s eventual break-up was a cumulative process created by a series of conflicts and setbacks. During the band’s formative years, the Beatles were constantly recording new music, traveling, and touring. The manager of the Beatles, Brian Epstein, acted as a form of mediator during these stressful times, handling the group’s finances and settling disputes among band members. However, Epstein’s role as manager increasingly diminished as the Beatles decided to stop touring in autumn 1966. Though Epstein would still oversee many of the group’s activities in 1967, many close to him claimed that he began showing signs of depression. According to Brian’s friend, businessman Peter Brown (in his memoir The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles), Epstein supposedly wrote a suicide note with the words “This is all too much and I can’t take it any more” in it around this time. Epstein suddenly died of a medical drug overdose on August 27th, 1967 at the age of 32. but many believe his death was accidental. Beatles guitarist John Lennon revealed “I knew that we were in trouble then” after Brian’s death. In Deborah Geller’s book The Brian Epstein Story, Beatles bassist Paul McCartney said that “If anyone was the Fifth Beatle, it was Brian.” Each Beatle had their own relationship with Brian, and his death had a profound impact on each member of the band. Epstein’s death left an empty void in the group and the band never fully filled that missing interval again. After Epstein’s death, the band was left without formal management, resulting in each group member fighting for control over the band’s ensuing direction. Epstein’s death marked the beginning of a slow end to the Beatles. The Beatles and their manager in mid-1964 (from left to right: Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and manager Brian Epstein) The Beatles’s eighth album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, was released in late May 1967. The album served as the band’s first record that was released after their touring hiatus began. The album also arguably marked the artistic, experimental, and musical peak of the Beatles. Ideas regarding the album’s concept and musical direction was largely conceived by Paul McCartney in November 1966 and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band served as the beginning of his ascension to the role as the band’s dominant creative force. McCartney would go on to control most of the Beatles’s artistic and musical direction. McCartney sought to create mostly positive pop songs whereas John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr wanted to write their own songs with a multitude of moods and messages. McCartney was also critical of the other members and their playing habits, playing their instruments himself and critiquing their performances. Harrison and Starr temporarily took their own separate breaks from the Beatles throughout late 1968-early 1969. During the early 1969 Let It Be sessions recorded for the motion picture of the same name, George Harrison even snapped back at a demanding Paul McCartney, conceding that “I’ll play, you know, whatever you want me to play, or I won’t play at all if you don’t want to me to play. Whatever it is that will please you… I’ll do it.” McCartney also wanted a “stripped back” sound for the songs recorded in late 1968-early 1969. In contrast, Lennon, Harrison, and Starr wanted Beatles songs to sound grand and proper with elaborate orchestrations in the “Wall of Sound” production methods of Phil Spector. “The Long and Winding Road” was a key factor in the Beatles’s break-up because the writer of the song, McCartney, wanted a simple ballad but Spector added elaborate instrumental overdubs to the finalized result. McCartney swore never to work with a producer other than their original one, George Martin, again and ultimately influenced him to produce their final album, Abbey Road. Around this time, Lennon and McCartney both increasingly also felt threatened by the emergence of Harrison and Starr as songwriters. The Beatles at the release party for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in mid-1967. Notice that Paul McCartney (far left) is the only Beatles member without a mustache, looking off in the distance as if disillusioned by the album already. John Lennon and Paul McCartney were the Beatles’s primary songwriters for a number of years in the early 1960s. Collectively known as Lennon/McCartney, the duo wrote the majority of the Beatles’s catalogue. From the group’s origins in 1962 up until about 1965, Lennon and McCartney wrote most of the tracks on a typical Beatles album with a few covers, leaving George Harrison to write one or two songs per album and writing a song for Ringo Starr to sing. When the band’s seventh album Revolver was released in 1966, George Harrison began maturing as a songwriter, penning three songs (“Taxman,” “Love You To,” and “I Want to Tell You”) for the album. Albeit Lennon and McCartney only allowed George’s songs “Within You Without You” and “Blue Jay Way” to appear on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour respectively in 1967, Harrison bloomed as a songwriter in 1968, composing “The Inner Light” (which was released as the B-Side to the Beatles’s #1 hit single “Lady Madonna”) and four songs for the band’s ninth studio record The White Album (“While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Piggies,” “Long, Long, Long,” and “Savoy Truffle”) in that year alone. Harrison even was the first Beatle to release a solo album with his Wonderwall Music, released three weeks prior to The Beatles’s White Album. Despite his emergence as a songwriter, Harrison felt alienated from the rest of the Beatles due to Lennon/McCartney’s continuous rejection. By spring 1969, Harrison wrote “Old Brown Shoe” (which was launched as the B-Side to the Beatles’s #1 hit single “The Ballad of John and Yoko”) and also composed two songs (“I Me Mine” and “For You Blue”) for the band’s Let It Be album. In summer 1969, Harrison reached his peak as a Beatles songwriter, composing the popular hits “Something” (which was issued as a B-Side to the album’s lead single “Come Together”) and “Here Comes the Sun” for their final album which was entitled Abbey Road. “Something” was the second-most covered Beatles song, with Frank Sinatra deeming it “the greatest love song ever written” whereas “Here Comes the Sun” also received critical acclaim. After the Beatles broke up, Harrison released his critically acclaimed 1970 record All Things Must Pass, his solo triple album that comprised of 23 songs, many of which Lennon/McCartney may have refused to use on a Beatles album. Additionally, Ringo Starr began writing music of his own from 1968 onwards, penning The White Album‘s “Don’t Pass Me By” and Abbey Road‘s “Octopus’s Garden.” The threat of a fourth songwriter in the group also put pressure on the legendary duo Lennon/McCartney, contributing to the band’s disintegration. Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney (the only Beatles member wearing a full beard), George Harrison (standing in back), Yoko Ono, and John Lennon during the tedious Let It Be sessions in early 1969. The family lives of the Beatles were also a key factor to the group’s break-up. John Lennon originally had a baby with his girlfriend, Cynthia Powell in 1962. After Lennon left Powell in 1968, he met Japanese-American artist Yoko Ono at a 1968 art fair. The pair would marry in Gibraltar in early spring 1969 and remained married until Lennon’s tragic assassination in 1980. It is believed by many that John was so romantically involved with Yoko Ono that he deliberately put more effort into the development of his solo career when he was with the Beatles. Lennon would bring Ono to many of the band’s recording sessions in late 1968, much to the dismay of the three other Beatles because it broke the group’s original pact to forbid girlfriend access to the studio. Many today see Ono’s presence and Lennon’s subsequently altered mindset as a key factor in the break-up of the Beatles, but those were just a few of the plethora of contributing factors that contributed to the band’s separation. Paul McCartney dated actress Jane Asher from 1964-1965 and then married photographer/musician Linda Eastman in 1969. Paul and Linda McCartney played together in Paul’s subsequent band, Wings, and remained married until Linda’s tragic death from breast cancer in 1998. George Harrison, while on the set of the Beatles’s 1964 film A Hard Day’s Night, met film extra/model Pattie Boyd, eventually remaining married to her for eleven years from 1966-1977. Ringo Starr was also married throughout most of his Beatles tenure, serving as hairdresser Maureen Cox’s husband from 1965-1975. In Ron Howard’s 2016 documentary The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years, Paul McCartney said that, by the group’s fourth year in 1966, “we all kind of were very aware that we didn’t live in each other’s pockets anymore. We all had separate existences” whereas Ringo Starr claimed that the Beatles grew up, started families, and “put less energy into the Beatle band” during that time as well. On August 22nd 1969, the Beatles gathered for what was to be their final photo shoot together as a quartet. The Beatles looked as weary as they ever had before. Lennon was pencil-thin as a result of his drug addiction, Paul was trying his best to remain upbeat and put his best fake smile on, George was looking as if he’d rather be somewhere else, and Ringo was wearing a full beard similar to John and George. George Harrison (far right) walks ahead of the rest of the Beatles with their respective family members during the Beatles’s last photography session at Tittenhurst Park in August 1969. John Lennon was the first to permanently depart from the Beatles. During a band meeting (albeit without Harrison) at Apple Records on September 20th 1969, Lennon said that he wanted a “divorce” from the Beatles, similar to the one he had with Cynthia. Though McCartney and Apple music publisher Allen Klein claimed that everyone’s faces “went pale” upon hearing this, Starr claimed that he felt relieved after Lennon’s announcement because it helped officialize the break-up. Paul’s ensuing depression and arguments with Apple Records over the release date of his own 1970 solo album McCartney led him to publicly announce that he quit the Beatles in April 1970. Many fans thought Paul had left the group due to his familial commitment to Linda, unaware that the group had disintegrated over eight months prior, echoing the chaos and disarray within the band itself that led to the break-up of the Beatles.
www.austinchronicle.com Denny Laine Saves the World British Invasion pioneer played it, sang it, saw it all BY RAOUL HERNANDEZ THU. APR. 26, 2018
Two weeks ago, Denny Laine (born Brian Frederick Hines) entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the Moody Blues, whose 1964 UK chart-topper “Go Now” features his lead vocal. The British guitarist, 73, also holds the distinction of being the only constant member of Wings alongside Paul & Linda McCartney. He appears at the Cactus Cafe on Sunday.
Freeze, sucker: (l-r) Michael Parkinson, Kenny Lynch, Paul McCartney, James Coburn, Clement Freud, Linda McCartney, Christopher Lee, Denny Laine, John Conteh
Austin Chronicle: You’re from Birmingham, which for some in the music realm remains infamous as the birthplace of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. What’s your experience of Birmingham?
Denny Laine: Well, not only those groups, but the Spencer Davis Group, and the Moody Blues, and the Move, and UB40.
AC: All great bands.
DL: Well, yeah, it was the Moody Blues and Spencer Davis Group that came down from Birmingham originally. Birmingham was not the place you could get a record deal. There was no music scene in Birmingham, really. It was just factories that had workers from all over the world. So a lot of musical influences came through Birmingham – reggae, Irish show bands. Most of the Birmingham bands were into pop, but you had to move to London to get a deal.
AC: Was Birmingham a place people wanted to escape from or just that London was where it was happening?
DL: Well, both. I joined the Moody Blues because they wanted to go to Germany first. Two of the guys had been out there working in the same clubs as the Beatles. Then we got discovered in a blues club. The Moody Blues were a blues band, so when we got discovered, we were taken to London. That’s where we started to make it. That’s where the record labels were. That’s where the action was.
When we started getting popular, a lot of bands came from Birmingham. Brum Beat was a magazine from Birmingham that started to bring music to the forefront, so therefore Birmingham became a music scene after that. More of an original music scene, let’s say.
Wherever people in the British Commonwealth came from to work in the factories after the war, they brought their music with them. Like I said, there was reggae and all sorts of styles we were influenced by, but especially American music thanks to American Forces Network in Germany. And Radio Luxembourg! We used to listen to all that American music. That’s how we first latched onto it.
AC: Had it not been for World War II, would the English have heard the blues and American R&B like they did?
DL: Definitely not, because if it weren’t for the war and the American Forces being in Germany, we wouldn’t have had a radio station playing R&B. We weren’t picking up on blues music at first. We were picking up on American pop music, but that led us to investigate, like kids do now. They research past music. Listening to American music, we got into blues before the American public did. We were very interested in it, and also there wasn’t the same sort of prejudice and separation between black and white music in England, or France. Europe was open to it all. The Moody Blues was very big in France, because they liked that we were basically playing blues.
We started out a little bit like bands in London – the Yardbirds, Eric Clapton, all those people. Jeff Beck. We were all into the blues. The Moody Blues and the Spencer Davis Group were the only blues bands that came from Birmingham to London and started being a part of that scene. So we were listening to old blues and eventually got a hit with “Go Now,” which is basically a gospel style song. We started to go more into the R&B scene, getting some obscure records we could learn and put in our set.
When I left the Moodies, Justin [Hayward] and John [Lodge] came along, and they had to do different music. That’s when they began writing their own stuff, because I was more into the blues side of things and they weren’t. They weren’t schooled in that. Fortunately for them, they did their own thing and it was very successful. I’m very happy about that. I’m glad they went on to bigger and better things. It gave me a sense of closure and I was happy for them.
AC: Were you surprised to hear “Nights in White Satin” after leaving the group?
DL: No. It’s a great song. Justin’s a great songwriter. And the treatment of “Nights in White Satin” was very much the Moody Blues sound, which was a lot of voices and flutes and mellotrons. Even though we didn’t use mellotrons when I was in the band, we were very much keyboard-based.
AC: Was your family musical?
DL: Yes, because after the war, everybody was into music in some sense. They were playing their own music. During the war, you had to make your own entertainment, all right? Practically every family, just to cheer themselves up, would sing and play music. My sisters and my brother were all very much into music. A couple of them were dancers.
My brother had a ukulele. That’s how I started. I found a ukulele in the cupboard. He was in the navy for 10 years, so I didn’t really grow up around him. I grew up around my sisters’ influences, all the different styles of music they were into. And then my parents had an act that they used to sing together in the local club.
I was put into a theater school called Jack Cooper School of Dancing where my sisters had gone. From there, I got into playing guitar in between the two halves of a musical, for example. I would get up there with a piano player and do some of my own stuff at the intermission. And then it developed from that into me getting into a band while I was at school. So it was definitely a musical influence from my family that got me going.
But it wasn’t just that. I was into gypsy jazz. I was into classical music. I was into all sorts of music as a kid. I was very curious about ethnic music and different styles. I loved Django Reinhardt. I loved Ella Fitzgerald. I was also influenced by all the crooners of the day, like Johnny Ray, Frankie Lane. Sinatra. That was family music. To play the guitar, I listened to that music, not so much pop music. When Buddy Holly and Elvis came along, I got into that more.
AC: So the British Invasion and that generation of musicians came out of an auto-entertainment movement born of the bunker?
DL: That’s exactly what it was. It’s pretty obvious if you think about it. They’re all waiting to be bombed in the shelters in the backyard, so they’re making music to keep themselves cheered up. It was a way of carrying on. Of course, after the war, it made its way to the young kids – because I was born nine months before the war ended – as a way of making a living. Everybody was encouraged to. I was never told by my parents, “Oh get a real job.” They were happy for me to do it. It was a lot of energy from all the kids. That’s why there were so many bands.
In school, I was in a couple of bands and then I went on to having my own band. It got quite big. In fact, the drummer from ELO, Bev Bevan, was in that band with me. It was called Denny Laine & the Diplomats. We got quite big in Birmingham, but the fact is they didn’t want to turn professional at the time. That’s why I joined the Moody Blues. We were all ambitious. We wanted to be famous. We wanted to make some money. We wanted to do something we enjoyed doing and we were encouraged to do it. I don’t know whether that’s the case these days.
I think these days, kids are encouraged to do it because they can see the history of the music business. In those days, nobody knew what the hell they were doing business wise. That’s why everybody got ripped off. Managers and record companies were useless except for distribution, but they didn’t have all the other stuff together. They didn’t know what to do with music, rock bands and stuff. We were all part of that Renaissance.
I don’t see many people from the past now because I live in America, but I got so friendly with everyone we used to play with, people like the Yardbirds, Rod Stewart. The Stones. We knew all these people. As young kids, we ended up being on the same labels. Not labels necessarily, but agencies. That’s where we got the Beatles tour and went with Brian Epstein [as a manager] at their recommendation. We got friendly with the Beatles because of that. I got friendly with Paul [McCartney] and that’s how I ended up working with him. I knew him for all those years before. It seems like years, but it wasn’t. You did a hell of a lot in two years. It was a lot more concentrated. That’s how it all came together, really.
AC: You’re talking about the birth of the modern music industry, of course, so how much did that change your life when “Go Now” went to No. 1 in the UK?
DL: We were on the Chuck Berry tour at the time and guess who was in the opening band? Opening the tour was Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce. They were in the opening band, the Graham Bond Organization, so I became friendly with them through that tour. As “Go Now” hit the bottom of the charts, it started creeping up because with every different city on that tour, people would see us playing it live and go buy it. That tour definitely helped promote it. That’s what you had to do in them days. You have to do it now. It’s come full circle. You can’t make money in the music business unless you play live now.
AC: Revenue is derived from touring.
DL: That’s exactly right. Back then, we didn’t have any money because management had it all. We didn’t know where it went, but we didn’t have any. Look at all the bands that happened to. The worst case of all is Badfinger. It effected all these bands that broke up and committed suicide. All sorts of things happened because people didn’t see the money.
AC: Did you see a single penny from the success of “Go Now”?
DL: No, not to start with. All we had was that we were looked after. Things were paid for by management, but nobody had any personal money. When we chased after it, somehow management vanished. Recently, the last couple of years, thanks to Steven Van Zandt, we did a settlement and the rights to our old recordings reverted back to us, so we now see some money. And that’s because Steven Van Zandt wanted to use “Go Now” in a film he was making, so after investigating ownership, it seemed the rights had reverted back to us. We found out that we actually did own all that stuff. It took 40 years, but we got some money back.
AC: Were you surprised when the Moodies were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?
DL: I wasn’t surprised. I thought it should have been years ago, not necessarily with me, but just as the band that they are now. I thought they deserved to be in because of their popularity. In some ways, if I hadn’t left, they wouldn’t have got so popular. I did them a favor in some ways [laughs]. I still respect all those guys. We had some great fun in the old days, so it’s great we’re being inducted together.
Originally they weren’t going to ask me to be inducted, and then I got the call saying I was inducted. The rumor went around that I wasn’t going to be and then I was, but it had nothing to do with the band. They wanted me to be. It’s all worked out well in the end and I’m very pleased for them. I’m pleased for myself, of course, but I’m pleased for the band. By their body of work they deserved to be in there a hell of a lot earlier. It’s not fair, you know?
AC: What are your feelings on a body like the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?
DL: I think it’s great there’s a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. That’s the first thing. How it’s run, I don’t know much about that. There’s a team that gets together and votes. I know, for example, Steve Van Zandt and Pete Asher and [deejay] Cousin Brucie and various other people wanted me in. They voted for me to be in it. They wouldn’t have voted for the Moody Blues if I wasn’t in it. They helped me.
AC: Does Wings deserve to be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?
DL: No, because Wings was never a band. I’m sorry, it wasn’t. It was a Paul McCartney project. You have to know that. We were known as Paul McCartney & Wings, but we weren’t actually a band. We weren’t like the Moody Blues, all equal members. It was Paul’s band. That’s the end of it. Although I stuck around for all those years, it wasn’t a group. In the public eye it was, but in business, we weren’t. It was the Paul McCartney project. That’s why he got inducted as an individual artist. Wings is part of his induction, separately to the Beatles, actually.
AC: Interesting to hear you say that because Wings was such a hugely popular group. All 23 singles the band released hit the Top 40, and Wings had five consecutive No. 1 albums in the U.S. Those are big numbers. And the group had a definitive life to it, right? It’s a decade, ’71-’81, so I’m surprised to hear you say it wasn’t a group, but rather “the Paul McCartney project.”
DL: Well, it was 99 percent Paul’s material. He wrote most of the stuff. I was around the longest of all the members, but it’s still Paul who had the popularity from the Beatles, of course. I had a little bit from the Moodies, but not that much. It was him guiding the ship, so that’s it. It was his popularity and his music that made it popular. My contribution was that I knew Paul so well. We got on so well together and had the same influences musically. We were good in that sense. We had a natural working relationship that was easy. I wasn’t in awe of Paul like a lot of people were. He was just a mate. I knew him.
The Beatles were a band. I wasn’t a big Beatles fan, although I obviously appreciated their talent. I was not a fan, though. I was in a band. The Moodies were rivals to the Beatles – in a friendly way. They’d come by our house and play us their new record and we’d play them our new record. We were friends, but still rivals. We always were. I don’t look at it like being a fan, then. I look at it as me working with Paul because he’s a fellow musician and we all grew up together. Our working relationship was very easy because of that.
AC: Was the experience of being in Wings one of living in a Beatles-eque bubble of fame?
DL: In many ways of that, I was on the outside looking in. Although the Moody Blues received some of that, it was nothing like the height that the Beatles got to, or the fame that they got to, so I was watching a lot of that going on, and I was impressed in some ways, but in some ways it was a bit scary. As Graeme [Edge] from the Moody Blues will tell you, one of the reasons they didn’t put their pictures on their album covers was because they didn’t want to be that famous. It’s too dangerous. Although a lot of bands want to be successful, when fame comes along, they start wishing they weren’t. It’s all that craziness that goes along with being famous. It distracts from the music, but at the same time, it presses you to keep coming up with something new. It’s a double-edged sword, let’s put it that way. It was a great experience, for sure.
Also, you’ve got to remember, to the Moodies, theaters were the biggest venues we ever did. The Beatles only did a few stadium things in the early days, but Wings was all stadium. It started out in small ways. To get the band good, we did a university tour just purely to practice in front of an audience without too much exposure and without too much attention put on us. It was stadiums all the way after that. Big arenas. Big.
AC: Must have been a surreal bubble when you, Paul, and Linda ended up in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1973 to record Band on the Run.
DL: That was just because the other two guys didn’t want to go. I know why they didn’t want to go. I was never told. Nobody said anything to me. They just didn’t turn up, so we went anyway because we already got the studio booked. Ginger Baker lived out there. We only worked with him on one track. We worked at the nearby studios and he knew all the people out there. It was kind of nice to have somebody living there that we knew. He introduced us to everyone. It was because of music that we went out there, to get different influences, like African drumming. We went there for that reason and we were influenced by it.
The studio wasn’t that great. We did have [Beatles engineer] Geoff Emerick visit, but we didn’t need a lot of equipment. Paul played drums, I played guitar, and we got the songs that way. Paul got robbed a few nights before we arrived and all the cassettes we had of the rehearsals, the band rehearsals for the “Band on the Run” song, were stolen. We had to start from scratch and memory. So he got on the drums, we counted four, and got to the end of it. Each song. And then we overdubbed all the rest.
AC: I find it extraordinary that just the two of you made Band on the Run, because it’s such a rich album, and one that’s certainly stood the test of time.
DL: I know. You have to give some credit to Linda, even though she doesn’t get enough. She gets a lot of negative stuff, but she was part of that Wings vocal sound. Even Michael Jackson said that to Paul: “Hey, I love the harmonies. Who’s doing the harmonies?” And Paul goes, “Me, Denny, and Linda.” That sound we had was because of her voice. She wasn’t experienced, but we got her into it and it did give a sort of sound to the stuff. You can’t mock that.
AC: On the succeeding Wings at the Speed of Sound, you’ve got two songs on there, “The Note You Never Wrote” and “Time to Hide.” What can you tell me about those songs?
DL: “Time to Hide” is my song, but “The Note You Never Wrote” is not my song. It’s Paul’s. I just sang it. He wrote it with me in mind. If you think about it, it’s the same tempo as “Go Now,” a 3/4. He was a big fan of “Go Now” and the Moody Blues. When we were on tour with the Beatles, he was always at the side of the stage watching us, taking notes or whatever. He loved “Go Now.” He liked us because we had our own sound. He was always trying to get us to do certain songs.
You know what Paul’s like: He’s always selling his songs to somebody. He wanted us to do the thing that Mary Hopkin had a hit with, “Those Were the Days.” He didn’t write it, but I think he had the rights to it. He thought that would be a good single for us and we said no, “It’s not our style, really,” but he thought it was and it probably would have been a big hit for us if we’d done it. So he got Mary Hopkin to do it and he produced her doing it.
With the Moodies, he was always checking us out and because we were all writers too. That was fascinating to the Beatles. They were influenced very much by the Beach Boys and Everly Brothers, of course, harmony-wise. They were also influenced by the Moody Blues in those days. Again, we had our own sound. Donovan even did the sleeve notes on the first Moody album. We were part of a little group of people that all admired each other.
AC: Your name is also on one of the best-selling singles of all time in England, 1977’s “Mull of Kintyre.”
DL: Well, I co-wrote that one. I did write that with Paul, although I still consider that to be his song because he came up with the chorus. When I heard the chorus, I said, “That’s a hit song.” So the next day we went out and wrote the rest of it. He only had the chorus. “Mull of Kintyre” was the biggest single of all time up until “Don’t They Know It’s Christmas” by that big charity.
AC: Band Aid.
DL: Yeah, yeah. “Mull of Kintyre” was huge for [Wings]. It became a Christmas song because it came out near Christmas. We were very much in the public eye during that Christmas, on television a lot, so it was a huge seller. Still to this day I do that song. I do the songs you mentioned off of Wings at the Speed of Sound. I do all that stuff within my set.
AC: Had you not taken a backseat to Paul in Wings, would you have been leading your own version of something like the Moodies?
DL: Yeah, in some ways, but there again, I wanted to work with Paul because I knew him and I knew it would be fun. I knew eventually we’d do well. In all ways. But yeah, I did give up. I had a solo career going for about a year with a thing called the Electric String Band, where I had two cellos, two violins, and a little power folk-rock trio. Paul and John [Lennon] and Peter Asher saw me close the first half of the show I did with Jimi Hendrix at the Saville Theater in London. That was Brian Epstein’s theater. Ash saw me do that show and that’s one of the reasons Paul called me a few months down the line. He saw me doing something a little bit different.
Once I got the call from Paul, it was great fun to start something new, but I did end up being there for a long time and in some ways neglected my own career. I did put a couple of albums out and then eventually, well you know what happened to Paul in Japan. [McCartney was arrested at the Tokyo airport in 1980 when eight ounces of marijuana were found in his luggage.] I did work on the last two albums, Tug of War and Pipes of Peace, but they weren’t Wings albums. That’s when I thought, “Now’s the time to try and do my own thing again,” which is what I did. Nobody fell out. We just weren’t going to be going on the road for awhile. That was it.
AC: Do you still talk to Paul?
DL: Through the office, but not really. The last time I saw him was a few years ago. We went to see UB40 in London together and we wound up spending the night watching them, reminiscing a bit. Again, we didn’t fall out. I don’t think he was too pleased about the fact that I wanted to leave, but I was at that point where I thought I was frustrated, so I wanted to go out and do my own thing.
AC: I was surprised to discover that one of your children counts Peter Grant as their grandfather. Is that right?
DL: Yes, my youngest daughter is his granddaughter.
AC: So much has been written about Peter Grant. Is he really the gangster that everyone makes him out to be?
DL: No, because Peter started out as a wrestler. He was in the business as a bouncer, a security guy who ended up being given the job [of manager]. Look, Don Arden, people like that, they’re all a little bit like that. I don’t know about the word “gangster.” I wouldn’t give him that title. He used to drive people about. He was like a personal assistant to a lot of people, and that’s the job he had with the Yardbirds. He was sent out on tour with them as their security guy.
When the Yardbirds turned into Led Zeppelin, Peter became their manager. So he became their manager by default, but he had the strength of character to deal with all that. He was tough, but his heart was for the band. It really was. He was the fifth member of the band. They trusted him and he never ripped them off. He loved them. Therefore, he became a great manager because of that – because he wasn’t trying to rip them off and they trusted him.
My experience was the same. I got very close to him in the end and was at his funeral and everything. I’d split up with his daughter by then. And I knew Peter before I got involved with his daughter. John Bonham was a big friend of mine. I also knew Jimmy Page quite well in the early days. And John Paul Jones. I worked with John Paul Jones in the studio. He did the string parts for a song of mine called “Say You Don’t Mind” that Colin Blunstone [of the Zombies] had a hit with. So I knew those guys.
John Bonham used to come and watch us in my band Denny Laine & the Diplomats. He’d come to watch Bev Bevan the drummer. He was a fan. That’s how I got to know Johnny. All during the Led Zeppelin time, Johnny and I were friends. He even came on tour with Wings once, just jumped on the plane and came with us. Johnny and I were big friends.
AC: You’ve lived such a rock & roll life. Why do you suppose this music, above all genres, holds such a sway on people? What is it about rock & roll that’s bigger than classical music and jazz and blues and hip-hop?
DL: Well, it’s because it came from all those things you just mentioned. It came from jazz. It came from the blues. It came from people we used to admire in the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties. It came from that and we took it to another level by basically being white. We had a bigger audience. There was not so much prejudice [in England]. Elvis wouldn’t have been so big if he hadn’t have been white. You get what I mean? We’re so influenced by black artists. We all are. We owe everything we do to black artists. Rap for example. Chuck Berry was doing rap. Muddy Waters was doing rap.
AC: Louis Jordan.
DL: Yeah, it’s all rap. It’s all rap. Everything is embodied in that music.
AC: Civilization is in such dire straits right now. Can something like rock & roll save the world?
DL: It pretty much has already. I mean in general. Music is like food. You can’t live without it. When there’s problems in the world, you write about it. Look at the blues artists. They were down and out, and they wrote about their lives. Look at country music. You’re writing on behalf of the people. It’s not necessarily your own personal stuff you’re writing about. Some of your personal stuff, but your songs are based on everybody’s experiences. Music soothes people, let’s be honest. Dancing and creativity, anything like that gives people hope. It’s like a religion and it’s somewhat based on religion. After all, a lot of that music came from the church. Gospel hymns, the Bible. It all came from that.
