The world premiere of my new tour Divas, Rebels & Junkies: Women In Music 1722-2019 takes place on Saturday 6th July at 10:45a.m. The meeting point is Leicester Square tube (by Wyndhams Theatre) and the tour costs £10/£8 - book by clicking the button at the bottom of this post.
The tour stars everyone from Judy Garland to Peggy Seeger and Marie Lloyd. Along the way we'll also be looking at the impact of women on the story of The Beatles…
All About the Girls Who Came To Stay
All About the Girls Who Came To Stay
How three women shaped the long and
winding road of The Beatles’ creative journey
through 1960s Westminster. By Adam Scott-Goulding
Pop Culture as art worthy
of discussion and dissection is the child of many fathers. But what about the
mothers of invention? Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage Pattie
Boyd, Jane Asher and Yoko Ono.
Our first port of call is
well-heeled Wimpole Street – no.57 –
W1, and a woman whose personal version of the story looks set remain
untold - the actress, writer and broadcaster Jane Asher.
Jane Asher is the subject
of one of the most common misconceptions among visitors who join my
Beatles-themed tours. "How long was she married to Paul?"
Asher and McCartney
announced their engagement on Christmas Day 1967 but broke up the following
year. The couple first met at the Royal Albert Hall in April 1963. Asher was
there to interview the band in her capacity up as a young celebrity of the day
– she was already a well-known actress in her own right.
Her influence on
McCartney – he moved in to the Asher family home at Wimpole Street in 1964 –
seemingly subtle at first, bursts into a veritable fireworks display of Beatle
creativity by 1966.
The room he shared with
Jane’s brother had a piano, and it was on this instrument that McCartney
chorded-out the melody that had arrived to him in a dream - that of Yesterday,
the most recorded pop song of all time.
It is when he moves into
the Ashers' upper middle class, artistic orbit that McCartney's talent and
natural curiosity collides with the awakening counterculture and the avant
garde in London.
 |
| Jane Asher as Juliet in the 1967 Bristol Old Vic production of Romeo & Juliet |
Jane introduced him to
the music of Vivaldi, a reference point he immediately brought to producer
George Martin for the arrangement of 1966's Eleanor Rigby. With his mind
thus opened to classical music, McCartney then took note of the Bach Trumpet (a
piccolo trumpet, pitched one octave higher than a standard trumpet) in a
televised broadcast of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos (watched with Jane). He
immediately pressed this new sound into service for his Penny Lane
recorded in late ’66 and released in January 1967.
As for Jane Asher's own
account of the period? Well it looks like we may never know. When asked about
the relationship by The Daily Telegraph in 2004, she simply replied: “I've
been happily married for 30-something years. It's insulting.”
“I always feel very wary including Jane in The
Beatles' history,” Paul said back in 2000. “She's never gone into print about
our relationship, whilst everyone on earth has sold their story. So I'd feel
weird being the one to kiss and tell.
“To tell the truth,” he added, “The women at that time got sidelined. Now it would be seen as very chauvinist of us.”
George Harrison met his
first wife Pattie Boyd on the set of the movie of A Hard Day's Night -
on location at Marylebone Station in early 1964.
In an interview with Maureen Cleave of the Evening Standard in 1966 – Lennon's infamous “bigger than Jesus” remarks originate from the same series – Harrison credits Boyd with “broadening his mind”.
 |
| A Hard Day's Night – from the opening scenes at Marylebone Station |
In an interview with Maureen Cleave of the Evening Standard in 1966 – Lennon's infamous “bigger than Jesus” remarks originate from the same series – Harrison credits Boyd with “broadening his mind”.
It was Pattie, having
spotted an ad in the Sunday Times, who attended an introductory lecture
presented by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Spiritual Regeneration Movement
Foundation at Caxton Hall in August 1967. (Westminster guides and lecturers
will surely enjoy the feminist resonance of a venue so associated with the
Suffrage movement.)
 |
| Pattie's column for 16 magazine |
Pattie encouraged George
to join her at the Maharishi’s subsequent event at the Hilton, Park Lane. Thus
begins a spiritual journey that came to define the next thirty years of
George’s life – as well as the Beatles’ next album, 1968’s eponymous double
album set known as The White Album.
John Lennon first met
Yoko Ono at the Indica Gallery in Mason’s Yard, St James SW1. That Lennon was
in attendance to view Ono’s work and not the other way around is crucial to
their artistic relationship. It is the 7th November 1966 – the date is worthy
of note because it’s the moment that Yoko reawakens John’s inner artist.
 |
| The site of Indica today, in Mason's Yard |
A creative child and an
art student in the 1950s, John’s artistic journey had been derailed by a number
of different factors: his own machismo, the expectations of his peers, and the
rage of grief at his mother's sudden death in 1957. By 1966 he felt trapped by
the expectations of The Beatles’ commercial success.
In the first flush of his
affair with Yoko, his artistic sensibilities are revived and off he goes on a
rampage of painting, writing, music and campaigning that takes his life and
career in a whole new direction.
The fact that the leader
of The Loveable Moptops gets politics, art and attitude at this point in his
journey gives mainstream exposure to what had hitherto been an underground
scene.
In turn, John’s voluble,
born-again artistic sensibility is instrumental in turning what had been mere
pop into something more substantial and long-lasting.
 |
| Yoko & John March 1969 |
He may well have got
there without Yoko (the same goes for Paul and George, above), but the timing
would have been different and there's every chance he would have looked a mere
follower rather than a leader. As the hedonistic 60s got down to the business
of becoming the bleak and nihilistic 70s, John Lennon was in the vanguard of
pop-as-art artistic expression. As the creative tide turned away from swinging
London to New York City, Lennon found himself at the helm of the ship - and
Yoko was his siren.
I’ve always felt there was
an aspect something akin to magic realism in the story of The Beatles. As a
storyteller and interpreter of history on my London Music Tours, I have found
this magic realism to be one of the attractions for Beatles fans. But care must
be taken. I believe it’s possible – with effort – to present the golden legend
of the 60s in a factual, analytical and critical way without tarnishing the
myth that many visitors have paid for.
To look at the story of
The Fab Four from the perspective of Jane Asher, Pattie Boyd and Yoko Ono adds
not only a depth to the tale, but allows the guide to shade the beloved
mythology with the primary colours of social realism – the quest for sexual
equality, shifting class boundaries and how the 60s moved that process forward
a few more inches.
In doing so, the legend
remains not only intact, but becomes something better than mere myth. It
becomes history. It’s early days yet – The Beatles remain a living memory for
millions the world over. But if we begin the business of finding the nuances in
their legend now, The Beatles story will not only illuminate how we danced,
dressed and loved in the early decades of the Second Elizabethan Age, but how
we lived, learned and evolved.
Diva, Rebels & Junkies – Women In Music 1722 - 2019 - Saturday 6th July 10:45am meet at Leicester Square tube…
Diva, Rebels & Junkies – Women In Music 1722 - 2019 - Saturday 6th July 10:45am meet at Leicester Square tube…
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