Blog #3 (Beatles London Walk): Adams

Blog #3(Beatles London Walk): Adams

The Beatles London Walk included a number of sites and locations listed below with comments:

 Swinging London (Music, Fashion, Film, Television and Books)

Swinging London is a catch-all term applied to the fashion and cultural scene that flourished in London in the 1960s.  It was a youth-oriented phenomenon that emphasized the new and modern.  It was a period of optimism and hedonism, and a cultural revolution.  One catalyst was the recovery of the British economy after post-World War II austerity which lasted through much of the 1950s.  In 1965, Diana Vreeland, editor of Vogue magazine, said “London is the most swinging city in the world at the moment.”  Later that year, the American singer Roger Miller had a hit record with “England Swings”, which presented a stereotypical picture of England, with lyrics such as “Bobbies on bicycles, two by two.”   Music certainly played a major part in the Swinging London cultural scene and included music by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Who, and other artists from what was known in America as the “British Invasion”, as well as the growing popularity of psychedelic rock as Jimi Hendrix being represented as a cultural icon, supported by British bands like Cream and early Pink Floyd.  This music was heard in the United Kingdom over pirate radio stations such as Radio Caroline, Wonderful Radio London and Swinging Radio England.

During the time of Swinging London, fashion and photography were featured in Queen magazine, which drew attention to fashion designer Mary Quant.  The model Jean Shrimpton was another icon and one of the world’s first supermodels.  She was the world’s highest paid and most photographed model during this time.  Shrimpton was called “The Face of the ‘60s”, in which she has been considered by many as “the symbol of Swinging London” and the “embodiment of the 1960s”.  The model Twiggy has been called “the face of 1966” and “the Queen of Mod,” a label she shared with others such as Cathy McGowan, who hosted the television rock show, Ready Steady Go! from 1964 to 1966.  Mod-related fashions such as the miniskirt stimulated fashionable shopping areas such as Carnaby Street and the Kings Road, Chelsea..  The fashion was a symbol of youth culture.  The phenomenon was featured in films of the time which  included: Alfie (1966), Georgy Girl (1966), Casino Royale (1967), along with others.  One television series that reflected the spirit of Swinging London was The Avengers.  The BBC Television show Take Three Girls (1969) is noted for Liza Goddard’s first starring role with scenes in which the heroines were shown dressing or undressing. Adam Diment’s spy novels featured Philip McAlpine, a foppish, long-haired, pot-smoking British spy straight out of Carnaby Street.

Beatlemania and Hey Jude

The phenomenon known as Beatlemania originated in the United Kingdom, birthplace of The Beatles, when the band first realized enormous popularity there in late 1962.  Returning from a highly formative two-year residency in Germany, The Beatles achieved a commercial breakthrough with their second UK single release, “Please Please Me”.  There followed an almost non-stop series of concerts and tours, attended with fervent enthusiasm across the UK, for the whole of the following year.  With intense media interest in The Beatles during 1963, the year was also taken up with TV shows, press interviews, and a weekly radio show.  Despite these demands the band continued to find time for sessions in the recording studio, releasing a number of albums and singles during the year.  1963 was also the year when Lennon’s son Julian was born.  On October 13, 1963, The Beatles starred on “Val Parnell’s Sunday Night at the London Palladium”, the UK’s top variety show.  The show was televised live, watched by 15 million viewers, and in one national paper’s headlines the following morning, the phenomenal nationwide interest in The Beatles was finally given a name, and one which from that day on would be adopted universally: “Beatlemania”. By the end of 1963, Beatlemania would begin to spread to other places internationally.  The single “I Want to Hold Your Hand” entered the US charts on January 18, 1964, selling one-and-a-half million copies in under three weeks, and the following month The Beatles made their first visit to America.  The great interest in The Beatles brought a major change in US attitudes to popular music and marked the start of the phenomenon known as The British Invasion.

“Hey Jude” is a song by The Beatles. Credited to Lennon/McCartney, the ballad evolved from “Hey Jules”, a song Paul McCartney wrote to comfort John Lennon’s son Julian during his parents’ divorce. “Hey Jude” was released in August 1968 as the first single from The Beatles’ record label Apple Records.  More than seven minutes in length, “Hey Jude” was, at the time, the longest single ever to top the British charts.  It also spent nine weeks as number one in the United States—the longest run at the top of the American charts for a Beatles’ single.  The single has sold approximately eight million copies and is frequently included on professional lists of the all-time best songs.

Abbey Road Studios and Abbey Road Crossing

 

Abbey Road Studios is a recording studio located at 3 Abbey Road, St. John’s Wood, City of Westminster, London, England.  It was established in November 1931 by the Gramophone Company, a predecessor of British music company EMI, its present owner.  It is most notable for being the venue in the 1960s for innovative recording techniques adopted by The Beatles and many other famous popular music performers who have recorded at this studio. In fact, The Beatles named their final 1969 studio LP Abbey Road.
The album’s cover photograph shows the four group members walking across the zebra crossing located just outside the studio entrance.  As a result of its association with The Beatles, since 1970 this section of

Abbey Road has been featured on the London tourism circuit. At the end of 2009, the studios came under threat of sale to property developers, but the studio received historic site status from the British government in 2010 to protect it.  The crossing featured on the Beatles cover, as well as the crossing directly north of it, has become popular photo-opportunity areas, despite the road still being a busy thoroughfare for traffic. The street sign had to be mounted high on the building on the corner, to save the local council the expense of cleaning and replacing the sign, which was frequently defaced and stolen.  The council repaints the wall next to the crossing every three months to cover fans’ graffiti.

Apple Offices

There were two notable events that took place on the rooftop of the Apple Corp building.   In January,1969, confronted with a fast-approaching deadline initiated by their  film director Michael Lindsay-Hogg for a live concert, the Beatles managed to stop their bickering and start focusing their attention on the half-dozen new songs they considered suitable for live performance.  Between the pressure of time and the force of inertia, the Beatles decided that virtually the only feasible way of providing Michael Lindsay-Hogg with the cinematic climax he was seeking was by performing their live concert on the roof of the Apple building itself. On January 30 beneath overcast noonday skies with the wind gusting and the temperature hovering around forty degrees, the Beatles ascended to the roof of Apple, six stories above Savile Row, and took their places on a makeshift stage of wooden planks that had been laid the day before.  Facing the street from right to left stood George Harrison, dressed in a black fur jacket and electric green pants, holding a Fender Telecaster guitar; John Lennon, swathed in a mottled fur coat that matched his mottled brown hair, holding a blond Epiphone guitar; and Paul McCartney, seemingly immune to the January chill, wearing an Epsteinian black suit and playing his old Hofner bass, which still had taped to its body the set list from the Beatles’ last concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.  Seated behind them were Ringo Starr, resplendent in a bright red rain slicker that contrasted sharply with the brass of his cymbals and the light wood finish of his drums, and Billy Preston, all but invisible as he hunched over his electric piano.  Seated at stage left was a tiny rooting section consisting of Yoko Ono, Maureen Starkey, and a handful of Apple employees.  Inadvertently, they were reviving a tradition that dated from Tudor times, when town bands would perform on the roofs of guildhalls on summer evenings.

They played quite a number of songs.  The stage area was ringed by lights, cameras and film technicians.  From their vantage point, the Beatles were performing to an audience that consisted mainly of pediments, dormers, and chimney pots.  As the music bounced off nearby buildings and cascaded down to the street, crowds of people formed on the sidewalks, looking skyward, trying to locate the source of the sound, and traffic came to a standstill on Savile Row.  Office workers in neighboring buildings leaned out of open windows; others made their way up to their own rooftops to watch the show.  While the cameras rolled, the bobbies (police) were admitted and directed to the roof, where they politely told the world’s most famous rock group that they would have to hold it down.

A less notable event took place on April 22, 1969, when Lennon changed his name by adding “Ono” as a middle name.  The brief ceremony took place on the roof of the Apple Corps building, made famous three months earlier by The Beatles’ Let It Be rooftop concert.  Although he used the name John Ono Lennon thereafter, official documents referred to him as John Winston Ono Lennon, since he was not permitted to revoke a name given at birth.

Submitted by Nina Adams

07.11.11