"Helter Skelter" (Vocals Only Mix)

The Hours and Times

The Hours and Times is a 1991 drama film written and directed by Christopher Münch. Starring David Angus and Ian Hart, it is a fictionalized account of what might have happened during a real holiday taken by John Lennon and The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein in 1963. Hart would again play Lennon in the film Backbeat.

Cast

* David Angus as Brian Epstein
* Ian Hart as John Lennon
* Stephanie Pack as Marianne
* Robin McDonald as Quinones
* Sergio Moreno as Miguel
* Unity Grimwood as Mother

Production

Director Christopher Münch originally saw The Hours and Times as a "DIY exercise," not expecting the film to secure any distribution. He wrote the script over a few weeks in early 1988 and traveled to England to cast it that spring.

Awards

The Hours and Times won the Special Jury Recognition award at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival. It was also nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the same festival.

Wikipedia

Beatles Covers: Harry Nilsson - You Can't Do That

Beatle People: Victor Spinetti

Victor Spinetti (born 2 September 1933) is a Welsh comic actor.

Early life

Spinetti was born in Cwm, Wales of Welsh and Italian heritage from a grandfather who was said to have walked from Italy to Wales to work as a coal miner. His parents, Giuseppe and Lily (née Watson), owned the chip shop in Cwm, over which premises the family lived and where Spinetti was born. He was educated at Monmouth School and the Cardiff College of Music and Drama, of which he is now a Fellow. Early on he was a waiter and a factory worker.

Film career

Spinetti sprang to international prominence in three Beatles' films in the 1960s, A Hard Day's Night, Help! and Magical Mystery Tour. He also appeared on one of The Beatles' Christmas recordings. The best explanation for this long-running collaboration and friendship might have been provided by George Harrison, who said, "You've got to be in all our films ... if you're not in them me Mum won't come and see them—because she fancies you." But Harrison would also say, "You've got a lovely karma, Vic." Sir Paul McCartney described Spinetti as "the man who makes clouds disappear". Spinetti would later make a small appearance in the promotional video for Paul's song, 'London Town', off the 1978 album of the same name. Spinetti has appeared in more than 31 films, including Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew, Under Milk Wood with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Becket, Voyage of the Damned, The Return of the Pink Panther, Under the Cherry Moon, The Popular Hanna-Barbera One called The Further Adventures of SuperTed - Leave It to Space Beavers (VHS, 1990) in the US and The Krays.

Theatre

Spinetti's work in Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop produced many memorable performances including Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be (1959, by Frank Norman, with music by Lionel Bart), and Oh! What a Lovely War (1963), which transferred to New York City and for which he won a Tony Award for his main role as an obnoxious Drill Sergeant. He has appeared in the West End in The Odd Couple (as Felix); Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in the West End; as Albert Einstein in a critically lauded performance in 2005 in a new play, Albert's Boy at the Finborough Theatre in 2005 and in his own one-man show, A Very Private Diary.

One of Spinetti's most challenging theatre roles was as the principal male character in Jane Arden's radical feminist play Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven, which played to packed houses for six weeks at the Arts Lab on Drury Lane in 1969. In 1980 he directed The Biograph Girl, a musical about the silent film era, at the Phoenix Theatre. He has also appeared on Broadway in The Hostage and The Philanthropist. He has also acted with the Royal Shakespeare Company, in such roles as Lord Foppington in The Relapse and the Archbishop in Richard III.

Spinetti co-authored In His Own Write, the play with John Lennon which he also directed at the National Theatre, premiering on 18 June 1968, at the Old Vic. Spinetti and Lennon appeared together in June 1968 on BBC2's Release. During the interview, Spinetti said of the play,

"it's not really John’s childhood, it's all of ours really, isn’t it John?" John Lennon, assuming a camp voice answered "It is, we're all one Victor, we're all one aren't we. I mean 'what's going on?'" Spinetti said the play "is about the growing up of any of us; the things that helped us to be more aware."

He also directed Jesus Christ Superstar and Hair, including productions staged in Europe. His many television appearances on British TV, include Take My Wife in which he played a London-based booking agent and schemer who was forever promising his comedian client that fame was just around the corner, and the sitcom An Actor's Life For Me. In September 2008 Spinetti reprised his one-man show, A Very Private Diary, touring the UK, as A Very Private Diary ... Revisted!, telling his life story.

Television

Between 1969 and 1970 Spinetti appeared on Thames Television, alongside Sid James, as one half of Two In Clover over two series. A sitcom about two office workers who jack it all in to become farmers, he starred in all but one of the 13 episodes. His absence in episode #3 of the second series was covered by fellow Welsh actor Richard Davies, playing Spinetti's character's brother.

In the 1970s Spinetti appeared in a series of television advertisements for McVities' (now United Biscuits) Jaffa Cakes, as "The Mad Jaffa Cake Eater", a Mexican bandit style character who surreptitiously stole and ate other people's Jaffa Cakes, prompting the catchphrase "There's Orangey!" He hosted Victor's Party for Granada. More recently he voiced arch villain Texas Pete in the popular S4C animated TV series SuperTed and has narrated several Fireman Sam audiobooks. Spinetti also starred in Boobs in the Wood' with Jim Davidson, filmed for DVD in 1999.

From 1999 to 2002 Victor played Max, the 'man of a thousand faces', in the popular Childrens TV programme Harry and the Wrinklies, which also starred Nick Robinson (Goodnight Mister Tom) in the title role.

Writing

Spinetti's poetry, notably Watchers Along the Mall (1963), and prose, have appeared in various publications. His memoir, Victor Spinetti Up Front...: His Strictly Confidential Autobiography, published in September 2006, is filled with anecdotes. In conversation with BBC Radio 2's Michael Ball, on his show broadcast on 7 September 2008, Spinetti revealed that Princess Margaret had been instrumental in securing the necessary censor permission for the first run of Oh! What A Lovely War.

Family

His younger brother, Henry, is a noted drummer.

Wikipedia

"Dear Prudence" (Bass Track Only Mix)

"The Night Before" (Single-Tracked Vocal Mix)

Backbeat

Backbeat is a 1994 film that chronicles the early days of The Beatles in Hamburg, Germany. The film focuses primarily on the relationship between Stuart Sutcliffe (played by Stephen Dorff) and John Lennon (played by Ian Hart), and also with Sutcliffe's German girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr (played by Sheryl Lee). It has subsequently been made into a stage production, debuting at Glasgow's Citizens Theatre in 2010.

Production

The film is based on interviews conducted by the writer/director Iain Softley with Astrid Kirchherr and Klaus Voormann in the spring of 1988.

The soundtrack to the movie includes no songs written by members of the Beatles, but various songs the group performed in Hamburg, written and recorded by other artists.

Rather than re-create the period sounds, iconoclastic, rebellious musicians were recruited (as a producer noted, The Beatles' pre-recording stage act was "the punk of its day"). This was done to better convey the way the music came across to the audience, at the time. The musicians were all members of well-known American rock bands:

* Dave Pirner (Soul Asylum): vocals
* Greg Dulli (The Afghan Whigs): vocals
* Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth): guitar
* Don Fleming (Gumball): guitar
* Mike Mills (R.E.M.): bass guitar
* Dave Grohl (Nirvana): drums

The original recording of "My Bonnie," performed by Tony Sheridan with the Beatles as a backing group was used in the film, the only use of a real Beatles performance.

Additionally, the film's distributor, PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, was then under common ownership with the label which owned the rights to release and distribute the Beatles' music from the Hamburg days, Polydor Records.

Main cast

Actor	Role
Stephen Dorff	Stuart Sutcliffe
Sheryl Lee	Astrid Kirchherr
Ian Hart	John Lennon
Gary Bakewell	Paul McCartney
Chris O'Neill	George Harrison
Paul Duckworth	Ringo Starr
Scot Williams	Pete Best
Kai Wiesinger	Klaus Voormann
Jennifer Ehle	Cynthia Powell
Wolf Kahler	Bert Kaempfert
James Doherty	Tony Sheridan

Hart also played Lennon in the film The Hours and Times. Bakewell later reprised his role as McCartney in the television film The Linda McCartney Story, as Williams again played Best in the television movie In His Life: The John Lennon Story.

Response

Paul McCartney was not impressed with the movie, stating:

"One of my annoyances about the film Backbeat is that they've actually taken my rock 'n' rollness off me. They give John the song 'Long Tall Sally' to sing and he never sang it in his life. But now it's set in cement. It's like the Buddy Holly and Glenn Miller stories. The Buddy Holly Story does not even mention Norman Petty, and The Glenn Miller Story is a sugarcoated version of his life. Now Backbeat has done the same thing to the story of The Beatles."

Backbeat at the Citizens' Theatre

Re-imagined for the stage by the original writer and director of the 1994 film, Iain Softley, Backbeat premiered at Glasgow's Citizens Theatre on 9 February 2010 featuring a live band.

Cast

Actor	Role
Alex Robertson	Stuart Sutcliffe
Isabella Calthorpe	Astrid Kirchherr
Andrew Knott	John Lennon
Daniel Healy	Paul McCartney
Jamie Blackley	George Harrison
Oliver Bennett	Pete Best
Justin McDonald	Klaus Voormann
Kate Hodgson	Cynthia Lennon
Paddy Lannigan	Bruno Koschmeider
Robert Reina	Bert Kaempfert
Charles Swift	Tony Sheridan

Wikipedia