Being born in Liverpool I literally grew up on The Beatles. My mum and dad would have their songs on in the house 24/7 and when I hear the early stuff it really takes me back to being a kid. I admit I did fall out of love with them for a little while when I worked in terrible Elizabethan themed tea room in my home town of Brixham in Devon as a teenager. This was one of those situations, no doubt familiar to many where you work intensively in a place that has one CD that they play on repeat - forever. I admit even to this day if I hear 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' I feel physically sick AND get the strange urge to toast a teacake. I have the exact same situation with heavyweight Greek crooner Demis Roussos, there's one particular album of his that just makes me feel like I'm about to pass out and unusually incites me to prepare food for hungry tourists.
Anyway back to The Beatles, I've always felt like there's a strange impenetrability about the Liverpool legends, their songs are cherished cultural land marks that we've all grown up with and the general feeling is that the creative process should never be questioned. I've always suspected that if you were to mentioned in a Liverpool pub that you weren't that keen on the Beatles the music would completely stop, and everyone would stand there staring in silence. I may try it some time. Undeterred by this I sometimes sit and let my imagination run wild when playing Beatles tracks on Absolute Radio - I wistfully stare out of the studio window and try to transport myself back to when the song was written and wonder what went on. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall during those legendary Abbey Road recording sessions. For every world class song that has been written there's a bin full of not so good lyrics that were rejected during band rehearsals - these are the bits that I'm interested in!
The Beatles' song that fascinates me the most is 'Yellow Submarine', it's a strange subject matter - the ups and downs of submarine based living still remains a seldom tapped area in song writing. How do you end up writing a song about a submarine? In fact I can hardly think of any other submarine songs off the top of my head, has there ever been a 'Now That's What I Call Submarine Songs' ALBUM? I very much doubt it. Anyway, this is all pure conjecture - I have my own version of how The Beatles decided upon the final lyrics of 'Yellow Submarine' and THIS is it....
