George Harrison on the Beatles' Hamburg Days

"In Hamburg we got very good as a band because we had to play eight hours a night and we started building a big repertoire of some of our own songs, but mainly we did all the old rock songs. In fact, we did everything. We used to play 'Moonglow' and lots of other old songs, whatever we could come up with in order to try not to repeat too many. Of course, we had our favourites, which we'd play a couple of times in the night in the main sets when most of the crowd were there. But we got very tight as a band. And it was the period in England when it was all 'matching ties and handkerchiefs' and doing routines like the Shadows, and we weren't there for that. So we just kept playing the rock-and-roll things and the stuff from records we used to get from Brian Epstein's shop before we met him."

Beatles Covers: Elton John - Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

Pete Shotton on the Day John Lennon Met Paul McCartney

"His name was Paul McCartney. We spent twenty minutes talking to him, and at first it was very reserved because John was a bit careful about meeting new people. He liked to suss them out first. He never liked to make the first move. People always had to come to him. Eventually Paul came to him by getting out his guitar and playing, I think, 'Twenty Flight Rock' by Eddie Cochran, and it was good! So, as I say, we chatted for about twenty minutes and then we split up and John and I walked home together. While we were walking, John asked me, 'What do you think of him then?' And I said, 'I think he's okay. I like him.' And John said, 'Well, should we ask him to join the band then?' And I said, 'Yeah, it's okay by me if it's okay by you.' So that was that."

Candy (1968)

Candy is a 1968 sex farce film directed by Christian Marquand based on the 1958 novel by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg, from a screenplay by Buck Henry. The film satirizes pornographic stories through the adventures of its naive heroine, Candy, played by Ewa Aulin. Many established actors are featured in the film, and popular figures such as Sugar Ray Robinson, Anita Pallenberg and Florinda Bolkan appear in cameo roles.

Plot

High school student Candy (former Miss Teen Sweden Ewa Aulin) seemingly descends to Earth from space. In the relatively simple plot, she naively endures an escalating series of situations in which her oblivious allure triggers satirical porn-film-like encounters. Roger Ebert wrote, "Candy caroms from one man to another like a nympho in a pinball machine, and the characters she encounters are improbable enough to establish Terry Southern's boredom with the conventions of pornography."

In school, her father (John Astin) is also her teacher. At a poetry recital, eccentric poet MacPhisto (Richard Burton) offers Candy a ride home in his limousine. At her home, MacPhisto drunkenly waxes boisterously poetic, arousing Candy and her gardener Emanuel (Ringo Starr) into sex. Scandalized, her family sends her to private school, where she embarks on a psychedelic journey during which she meets a number of strange people, including a sex starved military general (Walter Matthau), a doctor who performs public operations (James Coburn), a hunchback (Charles Aznavour) and a fake Indian guru (Marlon Brando). As the film ends, she continues to cavort with other people plus some of the characters she met in the film, followed by her return to outer space.

Screen Debut

This was the film acting debut of then Beatle Ringo Starr, who followed with a series of movie roles through the '60s, '70s and '80s, while he continued his music career.

Reaction

Candy was one of many psychedelic movies that appeared as the 1960s ended, along with Yellow Submarine, The Trip, and Head. The film opened to a poor box office result, but later became a cult classic from the psychedelic years of film. Reviews were generally positive with a few misgivings: the film rates 80% at the Rotten Tomatoes review aggregator. In a review representative of most professional reviewers at the time, Roger Ebert found it "a lot better than you might expect" but missed the "anarchy, the abandon, of Terry Southern's novel." Renata Adler decried "its relentless, crawling, bloody lack of talent."

Wikipedia

Paul McCartney on Learning to Play Trumpet and Guitar

"My dad was a pretty musical guy, and one day he bought me a trumpet. I started playing around and eventually learned 'When the Saints Come Marching In' and a couple of other standards. But I couldn't make my lip do quite what it was supposed to, and I realised that I wouldn't be able to sing if I was playing the trumpet, and I liked singing. So I decided to try the guitar, but it was a right-handed one because they hardly ever made left-handed guitars then. I couldn't figure out how to play it correctly. Eventually I turned the strings around and finally it felt good and I could play."

Rare Beatles Songs: I Fancy Me Chances

A very simple song, interesting in how late, relatively speaking, it appears in the Beatles early catalog (1962) -- not entirely surprising, however, given that their single of choice at the time was "Love Me Do." Recalled by Cavern Club dwellers as possessing a basic premise ("when I'm at the dances, I fancy me chances with you"), the song exists in Beatles recorded history only at the tail end of their career, through a brief run-through during the Get Back sessions during a jam on "Maggie Mae," where, typically, John and Paul forget most of the words.

Paul McCartney & Wings: Let 'Em Out Vol. 2 - The Trevor Jones Tapes

Elstree Rehearsals September 1975

01 Little Woman Love + C Moon #1
02 Suicide
03 You Gave Me The Answer
04 Ol' Man River
05 Stealin'
06 Junior's Farm #1
07 Junior's Farm #2
08 Little Woman Love + C Moon #2
09 Let 'Em In
10 Live And Let Die
11 Soily

Paul McCartney & Wings: Let 'Em Out Vol. 1 - The Trevor Jones Tapes

01 Silly Love Songs (no strings or horns)
02 Beware My Love (complete instrumental acetate)
03 Beware My Love (incomplete)
04 Must Do Something About It (Paul vocal)
05 She's My Baby (take 1)
06 She's My Baby (version 2)
07 The Note You Never Wrote (no strings)
08 Time To Hide
09 Wino Junko
10 Let 'Em In (mono promo edit)
11 Let 'Em In (stereo promo edit)
12 Newt Rack (instrumental, monitor mix)
13 Take It Away (monitor mix)
14 What's That You're Doing (rough take, monitor mix)
15 Hi Hi Hi (mono acetate alt mix)
16 Another Day (mono acetate mix)
17 Junior's Farm (alt mix by Ernie Winfrey)
18 Sally G (alt mix by Ernie Winfrey)
19 Daytime Nighttime Suffering (early mix)