Happiness Is A Warm Rolls

Picture by LAWRENCE BOGLE

Yes... that's me with John Lennon's psychedelic Rolls-Royce. I had the unexpected pleasure of checking it out on its brief visit to London a few days ago when it was part of a display of famous Rollers at Bonhams in central London.

It normally resides at a museum in Canada, but it was here to help R-R promote a new model – along with cars belonging to Fred Astaire and the Queen.

Lennon took the car to the States in 1970, and ended up donating it to a New York museum to ease a tricky tax situation. It is now reckoned to be the most valuable automobile in the world

Even today, it is still a work of outrageous art. Chums such as Paul, George and Ringo, not to mention Brian Epstein, Bob Dylan and Keith Moon, all seemed to have had a jolly time in the back of the car – which was said to have an extensive supply of drugs and alcohol.

But the exterior was perhaps the trippiest thing of all – a collision of psychedelia with gypsy caravan-style art that defies you not to smile at the irreverence of it.

I thought of it again today when I was in rehearsal with my old band, the Shark Dentists, working on the infernally difficult-to-play Lennon song 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun'. With a little more work, it – and its combination of 4/4, 3/4, 6/4 and 2/4 – should be ready for performing at a little festival in the Midlands next month.

Pretty Shocking

I have a lot  of time for Drumhead magazine and its editor, Jonathan Mover – it's basically the best magazine that I know of for drummers. It has high standards and its content carries a lot of weight.

In its latest issue it carries an interview with the legendary Bernard 'Pretty' Purdie and eventually gets to his legendary claims about the fact that he played on quite a lot of Beatles tracks. Or 'fixed' them, to use his phrase.

But his claims become even more shocking here when he suggests that Ringo Starr's drumming did not appear on a single one of the Beatles' studio tracks. He claims there were three other drummers (including him, and excluding Andy White and Pete Best) who 'fixed' the drumming for the Beatles.

His only concession to Ringo Starr is that Purdie says Ringo played 'live' with the band (which seems beyond debate).

If this remarkable claim about the Beatles recordings is true, isn't it the most shocking revelation? If it is false, why is Drumhead printing it? And why aren't lawyers knocking at Purdie's door?

All sorts of rumours re Beatles drumming continue to circulate. Paul McCartney is said to have played drums on a number of songs (although Purdie claims McCartney wasn't a good enough drummer to do that – or even a good enough bassist) and there have been stories too of ace session drummer Hal Blaine doing some 'fixing' for the Beatles.

Whatever the truth, all of this seems to highlight a grim reality – that many hit records made by bands back in the day (and also today) probably often don't feature the bands themselves, but session musicians who could be relied on to get it right first or second time, rather than 47th time. Those unsung session musicians tend to keep their stories to themselves, but sometimes they play and tell, and maybe sometimes they don't tell it quite like it was but how they hazily recall it.

Storm Trooper

I don't know why it took me so long, but I finally got around to reading 'Riders On The Storm', drummer John Densmore's account of his time with the Doors.

The Doors were an amazing band on so many levels and remain so. As I said in my previous post on the death of Ray Manzarek, they were way out ahead of the Beatles and the Stones.

If ever proof were needed of the skill, intelligence, thoughtfulness and passion of the drummer, Densmore's book is exactly that. And if you want sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, they're all there too.

Densmore's ability to use the drums to respond to other instruments but, above all, to Jim Morrison's words and almost complete unpredictability on stage continue to inspire me, and no doubt countless other players.

Paying Tribute

The main point about tribute bands is that they tend to make money. They're easy to sell and easy to explain and the punters seem to love them. Who wants or needs original music? Or, in fact, music? The tribute band is not so much about music as about nostalgia – for an era you lived through, or for an era you wish you could have lived through. 

I once enquired about playing with an established Eagles tribute band – yes, I admit I did fancy the gigs and the money, and I confess that I really admire the Eagles – and was told that every drum break would have to be note for note the same as on the original records, because the audience would notice if it wasn't. It sounded a terribly sad experience for musicians and audience alike. Trainspotting would be more interesting.

A band called the Fab Beatles are due to play the album Revolver in full at a gig in Brighton to mark the record's 50th anniversary. I'm sure they are a wonderful band but the point of all this seems elusive. If you want to listen to Revolver (the first album I bought, and to my mind, better than its follow-up), listen to Revolver.

The only possible point of covering someone else's song is to bring something new and different to it. Tribute bands, on the whole, do the complete opposite. But that, of course, is what a lot of people want.

Another Door Closes

It's sad to hear of the passing of Ray Manzarek.

I first heard The Doors - performing The End - courtesy of a progressive English teacher who played the final track of their debut album to us in a poetry lesson early in 1967. He had an import copy - and as soon as I could, I went out and bought it.

It remains one of the finest records ever made. Not just for The End... but for every darkly brilliant track. And not just for Jim Morrison's remarkable voice, or Manzarek's trademark keyboards, or Robbie Kreiger's unsettling guitar, or John Densmore's incredibly precise yet emotional drumming.

The Doors were (like the Beatles) the sum of their parts - and then some. But the Doors were hipper and bigger and far more dangerous than the Beatles could ever hope to be.

Cheese And Onions

"I have always felt in the back of my mind, cheese and onions"... in struggling to find any music that I really wanted to listen to at the moment, I was grateful to be given a copy of The Rutles album...

Cheese and Onions (extrapolated, of course, from the Beatles A Day In The Life) provides one of rock lyricism's finest moments, when Neil Innes sings Lennon-style: "Do I have to spell it out? C, H, E, E, S, E, A, N, D, O, N, I, O, N, S, oh no..."

Sheer meaningless genius that really does put the whole thing in perspective... perhaps "too much ****ing perspective", as Spinal Tap would say.

Monkey Business

I had the pleasure of playing drums on a recording session by Brighton band The Monkey Fingers last night. It was the usual story of three-and-a-half hours setting everything up, half an hour playing and two hours trying to sort out the recordings.

The Funky Mingers, as they are also known, play mainly rhythm and blues in a Sixties/Seventies, Stones/Beatles kind of way. And the lead guitarist Gary is 18. He wasn't even born when people were born who weren't even born in that era. And yet he totally has the feel for the music and played some great solos.

I recall my father saying that the music we were listening to in the Sixties wouldn't last. Well, he got that wrong...