ADAM FAITH'S BRUSH WITH APARTHEID - Book Extract

Before he became an actor, manager of Leo Sayer and financial consultant, Adam Faith was second only to Cliff Richard in the pre-Beatles UK pop’n’roll gold rush. Born Terry Nelhams in Acton in 1940, he reinvented himself many times during a topsy-turvy life of glorious triumphs and often cataclysmic failures. Having made and lost several fortunes and, to the chagrin of his faithful wife Jackie, established himself as an incorrigible Cassanova, he died in the arms of his 23-year-old girlfriend in 2003.

         He did have some principles though, as this extract from the just published Omnibus Press book Big Time: The Life of Adam Faith by David and Caroline Stafford, indicates. It’s in two parts, the second half tomorrow.

         It is 1964 and, like Dusty Springfield before him, Adam Faith is about to find himself in hot water for his opposition to the repellent policy of apartheid in South Africa.

In the South Africa of the sixties, people were either “white”, “black”, “coloured” or “Indian”. There were no grey areas. If you were a borderline case, the Race Reclassification Board would run tests. They might, for instance, put a pencil in your hair. If it stayed put, you were “black”.

         It was a criminal offence for the races to intermarry or have sex. The Reservation of Amenities Act specified which races could use which buses, beaches, benches, hospitals, schools and so on. The Black Self-Government Act effectively disenfranchised native Africans. Anybody who uttered a whimper of protest was branded a Communist and jailed. On June 12, 1964, one such, Nelson Mandela, was found guilty of “sabotage and conspiracy to violently overthrow the government” and sentenced to life imprisonment on Roben Island.

         Getting round the Apartheid Laws was difficult and dangerous, but it could sometimes be done. There was, for instance, a degree of haziness about the regulations concerning multi-racial audiences at cinemas, theatres and concert venues because these came under the heading of something called “culture” for which a special case could, maybe, be made. This left a very limited possibility for wriggle-room.

At the beginning of December 1964, Dusty Springfield flew out to South Africa with her band The Echoes to play seven dates. Aware of the situation, she and her manager had specified in her contract that she should play before multi-racial audiences at the majority of the concerts.

         She completed five of her seven gigs, the last in front of a mixed audience at the Luxurama Theatre in Cape Town.

         The Luxurama was owned by Ronnie Quibell, one of South Africa’s biggest promoters. It was, he claimed in a later enquiry, originally built as a non-white venue, but when he started booking overseas pop stars to play there, whites wanted to come, too, and sometimes the whites outnumbered the non-whites. The result, just about, fulfilled Dusty’s demand for a mixed audience.

         Officials of the South African Government’s Ministry of the Interior took a dim view of anything that transgressed their profound belief in racism. They didn’t do wriggle room. They presented Dusty with an ultimatum – “sign this pledge not to play before non-segregated audiences again or get out”.

         For a day and a half, the Men from the Ministry, three heavies, leaned on Dusty’s manager, Vic Billings, encouraging him to sign. When he and Dusty refused, they were, in effect, deported from the country. The Ministry issued a statement saying, “Miss Springfield came to this country with the avowed object of defying the Government’s stated policy with regard to multi-racial audiences and she was on two occasions warned through her manager to observe our South African way of life in regard to entertainment and was informed that if she failed to do so she would have to leave the country.”

         Back in the UK, 15 MPs signed a House of Commons motion applauding Dusty’s defiance in the face of “the obnoxious doctrine of apartheid in South Africa”. This left another 600 and something MPs who didn’t sign.

         Tito Burns, a noted London booking agent, promptly cancelled forthcoming tours by The Searchers and The Zombies.

[Adam Faith’s manager] Eve Taylor, it seems, was largely oblivious to events in the wider world.

         “She had no idea about wars and revolution,” says Sandie Shaw, another of her clients. “Her knowledge of social unrest stopped at the Harrods sale.”

         Adam had been booked to fly out to South Africa at the end of December. Cynical commentators, even at the time, suggested that when Eve saw the publicity that Dusty got out of her set-to, wild horses couldn’t have stopped her going ahead with Adam’s tour, but it does take an unhealthy dose of cynicism to believe that a manager – give or take a Don Arden or an Allen Klein – would endanger a client’s life and liberty for a few column inches. Besides, she wasn’t just putting her turn’s safety at risk. Eve’s husband, Maurice, was going along, too, to look after Adam.

         If Eve was genuinely unaware that Adam was flying into a hurricane, she should at least have gleaned some inkling when the Musicians’ Union, which had a blanket instruction to members not to accept any work in South Africa, insisted that The Roulettes pull out of the tour. Defiance of the ruling would have resulted in their union cards being torn up, an act which, in those days of the closed shop, would have sent Russ [Ballard], Bob [Henritt], Peter [Thorp] and John [Rogers] down to the Labour Exchange looking for alternative careers.

         Adam, however, as a singer/performer/actor, was not a member of the Musicians’ Union. He was in Equity, the Actors’ Union, and they dithered about South Africa for years.

         A couple of days before Adam was due to leave, the South African authorities insisted that before they would issue a visa he would have to sign a letter giving assurance that he would play to segregated audiences only. As a sop, they would allow him to give, in addition to 42 performances to white audiences, two performances for non-whites.

         Adam refused to sign. “I am prepared to lose a lot of money and four weeks in the sun.”

         It was a stand-off. Later the same day, the South African authorities withdrew their demand and granted Adam his visa. Adam also received a telegram from Ronnie Quibell, the promoter of the tour, saying that he’d sort out any problems with the government. Ronnie had sold a lot of tickets. If Adam didn’t turn up he, too, stood to lose a fortune. Under such circumstances, any promoter would say whatever it took to get his artiste on the plane.

         When Adam flew out on the December 23, arrangements were still unsettled. Adam, however, remained determined to do what was right. “My contract states that I will appear before mixed audiences,” he said. “If I am not allowed to do so, I will have no option but to return home.”

        

Tomorrow: What happened when Adam got there.

THE WHO - Tampa, Florida, April 15, 2015

Last night The Who opened the first US leg of their ‘Who Hits 50’ tour at the Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida, and Just Backdated has made arrangements with my old friend and uber-fan Lisa Seckler-Roode to send reports from several of the shows that she is attending along the way. From her report, it looks as though the set-list and order of songs has changed a bit from the show I saw in Birmingham back in December.

         Lisa writes: “‘A Quick One’, ‘Magic Bus’, ‘The Seeker’, ‘Amazing Journey’/ ‘Sparks’, & ‘Slip Kid’!!!!! Pure bliss. ‘Can't Explain’ opener; not much banter at first.... ‘I'm One’ was lovely. Roger's voice was slow to warm up, but once it did... he did some great growls during ‘Magic Bus’ and ‘A Quick One’; ‘Amazing Journey’ and ‘Sparks’ had FIRE!!! The graphics for Tommy were spectacular.

         “‘Join Together’ was jolly fun; low point for me was ‘Eminence Front’, ‘My Generation’ good but had lackofthunderfingers disease. Mike was swinging during ‘Amazing Journey’ & ‘Sparks’ but very controlled; Roger guarding his shoulder. ‘I Can See For Miles’ was fun and vocals were spot on.

         “‘Love Reign O'er Me’ was... passionate; PT beat the guitar up during the break, stretching the notes.... A little fire in the belly there.... Overall a good opener.”

         Lisa connected with the source after the show (see below) and I think she'll be reporting from Forest Hills (may 30) next. 

The picture of Roger and Pete (wearing what looks like a convict’s hat) was taken for the Tampa Tribute by Chris Urso. 

PERCY SLEDGE - RIP

We moved our family from Shepherds Bush in West London to Gomshall in Surrey on a stressful Thursday in the summer of 2006 and the next night I went into the Compasses, the local pub about two minutes’ walk from our new house, for the first time. I’d seen a sign outside that promised free live music every Friday and in a corner of the room was a guy with a white Fender Strat and he was singing ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’ quite beautifully.

         He turned out to be Steve Simpson, who used to play in Ronnie Lane's band Slim Chance. As I nursed my pint and listened to Steve, I realised we'd made the right move.

         ‘When A Man Loved A Woman’ is, of course, one of the most famous soul songs ever produced, written and sung in its original form by Percy Sledge who died yesterday. A bittersweet meditation on the inability of a love-struck Romeo to recognise that the object of his affection might not be quite as perfect as he imagines, it is utterly timeless, tear-jerkingly poignant and shockingly true to life; recorded at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, in 1966 and carried along in the main by a mournful organ played by Spooner Oldham and Sledge’s clear but grief-stricken intonation.

         In the small print the song is credited to Calvin Lewis and Andrew Wright, two members of The Esquires, a band from nearby Sheffield of which Percy Sledge was the singer. Evidently Sledge gave them the writing credits as they came up with the melody over which he improvised lyrics based on his own feelings about a recently dissolved relationship. He would come to regret it, of course, not least because in 1987 Levi’s used ‘When A Man Loves a Woman’ in a jeans commercial in the UK, which sent the song tp to number two in the British charts. There was also a slew of cover versions by, among others, Bette Midler and Michael Bolton. Curiously, in view of his theme of romantic betrayal, it is among the most requested ‘first dance’ numbers by newlywed brides and grooms.

         RIP Percy, your lovely song will live on forever.

THE WHO – Jacksonville, 1976, Playing For The People Who Weren’t There

Elsewhere on Just Backdated I rhapsodise about a Who concert in Jacksonville on August 7, 1976, which just happened to be the last time I saw them perform with Keith on drums, not that I knew that at the time.

         This post has been read by many fans, one of whom Mark Starcke, has sent me a substantial cache of photos taken at this show, 167 to be precise, perhaps the largest number of live Who pics ever taken by a single photographer at any one Who show ever. Many of them are fantastic and truly capture the excitement of The Who at this stage in their career.

         Sometimes words can’t quite describe the power and exuberance of The Who in full flight, the way the music flowed with their athleticism, the excitement of seeing Pete spinning his arm around and leaping around in time to the music while Roger threw his microphone into the air and Keith knocked ten tons of shit out of his kit while John just stood there holding it all together with his immaculate bass lines. It’s hard to get that across to those who weren’t there, who think they were just another rock band going through the motions.

         These 16 selections from Mark’s pictures speak for themselves really. This is what I saw at Jacksonville that night, partly from close to the front, partly from the stage itself, on John’s side of course as it didn’t do to get in the way of Bob Pridden, especially when Pete was yelling at him.

         What a fucking lucky bastard I was, and so were all those who were there that night. Pity the poor sods that weren’t there but then again, maybe if it wasn’t for them this night wouldn’t have been as special as it was. 

BARRY MANILOW MARRIES HIS MANAGER – Not Such A Shock To Me

I wish to extend my belated congratulations to Barry Manilow with regard to his marriage to his long-standing manager Garry Keif. According to reports the ceremony took place in 2014 in front of about 50 friends, none whom saw any reason to discuss it publicly. Good for them. Quite how the details have emerged over the past 24 hours I don’t know.

         Barry Manilow’s music is not to my taste but I interviewed him once, for Melody Maker, in 1975 at a hotel somewhere in the Midwest and he was very charming, smartly dressed in a blue and white check pullover and flared tan slacks, his hair immaculately coiffured. I saw him perform too and it was evident that he was a pianist of great prowess, though the schmaltzy hit songs he performed didn’t really reflect this. I think that, secretly, he’d have preferred to lead a jazz trio in which he could improvise and stretch out. ‘Mandy’ didn’t really offer him the chance.

         But I have a personal reason for celebrating the fact that Manilow has now evidently ‘come out’ as a gay man. Urged to do so by the Omnibus Press sales department, in 2000 I commissioned a biography of Manilow whose Chicago-based author Patricia Butler gathered evidence which pointed to his being gay and wrote her book about him accordingly. An alarm bell sounded in my head and I had the book read for libel, an expensive procedure that resulted in the lawyer concerned advising me to remove all mention of Manilow’s sexuality.

         I protested. Not only was it fairly well known within the music industry that Manilow was gay but my author had done her research well and come up with on-the-record quotes from friends and professional colleagues that confirmed Manilow was a gay man. There was also plenty of circumstantial evidence, including an earlier reference to his being gay in People magazine. The lawyer explained to me that Manilow’s fan base consisted primarily of single ladies of a certain age who believed he was ‘available’, that this was part of his attraction as a singer and that the book could therefore be accused of implying that Manilow was being ‘deceitful’, and that this – not the actual allegation that he was gay – was potentially libellous.

         The author was far from pleased that her book might be thus censored, and I felt bound to support her. I took the issue to a higher authority and we decided to publish and be damned. As I thought, Manilow didn’t sue us, no doubt because to do so would draw attention to his sexuality and also help promote the book. He isn’t stupid. However, the book was roundly condemned on line within the Manilow fan community, all of whose members refused to believe that their idol was anything other than a heterosexual man who had simply yet to meet ‘Mrs Right’.

         In the event the book wasn’t particularly successful by our standards, probably the result of the fans’ disapprobation. It’s now out of print as a hard copy but used editions can be bought cheaply on Amazon and it is still available in a digital format.

         Either way, I wish Barry and Garry all the best for the future. 

BARON WOLLMAN – The Rolling Stone Years

To the Proud Gallery in Kings Road for an exhibition of photographs by my friend Baron Wolman, the original staff photographer on Rolling Stone magazine when it was launched in 1967. Baron’s last London show – in October 2012 – concentrated on his pictures of groupies, all shot for an RS special in 1968. This time around, though, it’s a retrospective of his work with rock’n’roll stars, and many of the photographs in this show appeared in Baron’s book The Rolling Stone Years that Omnibus Press published in 2012.

          Baron was, as he cheerfully admits, in the right place at the right time, and aside from his technical abilities behind a camera, his great skill was being able to put his subjects at ease so his photographs look natural, how these stars of the stage really are. So on the walls of the Proud Gallery we have Jerry Garcia, holding up his right hand to reveal a missing middle finger; Janis Joplin in all her finery; Johnny Cash, looking sombre in a tux; Mick Jagger, in make-up on the set of Performance, holding a box camera; Pete Townshend in a glittery coat, arms out stretched, Gibson ES guitar dangling from his shoulders, and looking intense while recording Tommy in London; Jimmy Page’s eight-strong guitar army at the ready before a Day On The Green concert in San Francisco; Howlin’ Wolf, bug eyed and ass atremble on stage in Ann Arbor; and, perhaps best of off, Jimi Hendrix in action at Winterland in 1968, guitar screaming, his face awash with emotion.

         

“Jimi Hendrix was one of my absolute favorite photographic subjects,” writes Baron in the intro to his Rolling Stone Years book. “He dressed well all the time. Even when he was at rest, between his clothes and his looks, he was photogenic. When Jimi was on a stage he was such an incredible performer. The genius of his musicianship aside, he just looked so good on the stage – his facial expressions, the way he would cross his arms to play, he’d play behind his back, he’d play with his teeth, he’d make love to his guitar. For a photographer, shooting Jimi at work was like hitting the mother lode... or, as they say, shooting fish in a bowl. I look at the contact sheets of Hendrix and on a contact sheet of 36 exposures they’ll be 20 great shots minimum. Guess that says something about him or me, or a little bit of both.”

          Baron’s first live live concert assignment for Rolling Stone was shooting The Who at the Cow Palace on November 18, 1967. “I had no idea what I was getting into,” he recalls. “I’d not shot live music before, I was a concert virgin. I was sent out to shoot The Who and it felt like I was being sent into battle – out to the front lines. When I got to the Cow Palace I didn’t quite know what to do, I just started walking around backstage. I know I had a press pass because I could go wherever I wanted to go. I just wasn’t sure where to go!

          “I didn’t take any pictures before the show because I didn’t know what backstage was, what it was all about, didn’t even know I could go there. I thought, OK, these guys are going to perform and I’m going to take pictures of them performing; backstage was the place you waited for the show to begin. I had no idea what to expect and when they finally made it to the stage I was in for a big surprise.

          “I didn’t go to Monterey Pop. Had I gone and seen them before then everything would have been clear, but I hadn’t so therefore I knew nothing, which is too bad, I would have known what was coming. As it is I was thinking, ‘What’s this guy Townshend doing? He’s breaking his fucking guitar, why is he doing this? That’s an expensive guitar.’ I had no idea this was part of the act. Then I saw him do the windmill or whatever he calls it. ‘That’s cool,’ I thought. I tried to photograph everything that was going on but it was coming at me fast and furious. I didn’t know who Keith Moon was at the time or I would have taken more pictures of him; John Entwistle had this cool looking bass so I thought that’s a good photo and took too many of him. I was so damn naïve; all I was doing was looking for a good picture. Toward the end of the set the smoke covers the stage and the band leaves so I ran up on stage and there’s a smoke bomb. When Townshend destroyed his guitar I was stunned, nearly traumatized. It would be like me pounding my Nikons and my Leica against the concrete, totally beyond my nature or comprehension. It wasn’t just that he broke the neck, he completely destroyed the thing (at least he did that night). It shocked me to the point of being afraid that something bad was going to happen.

         
“This iconic photo [Pete with his arms outstretched] was shot during the same ’67 tour. Pete would probably have recognized me and given me that picture. In his signature spread eagle photograph he looked straight down at me, ‘Here you go, this is for you, pal.’ Either way I like to think of it as a gift from Pete to me.”

LIVE TOMMY, 2013

Before delivering the next generation of Charlesworths to their destinations in London today I threw into the car the upgraded 2013 Tommy package that included the live ‘bootleg’ Tommy CD, which was apparently recorded at Ottawa on October 15, 1969, a show I have referred to before in my writings about The Who as a result of having picked up a truly magic bootleg of this show at a Who fan convention in the early nineties.

So on the way back from Primrose Hill, the first offspring having been dropped off in Marylebone Road and the second delivered to where she needed to be a bit further north, I shoved the CD into the car stereo system, cranked it up and headed back through Regents Park towards Westway and all points west in the direction of home again.

It sounded terrific on the car stereo, nothing like this to liven up a boring drive. For the most part this live version of Tommy is fantastic, the usual marathon performance, all the songs segued together so closely the audience barely have time to catch their breath between them all. The customary self-depreciating introduction from Pete is followed by a stunning ‘Overture’, lovely guitar cascades leading into ‘It’s A Boy’ and everything you’d expect from The Who at their peak in 1969. The instrumental ‘Sparks’, with its layered dynamics, sudden octave drops and multiple rising crescendos, is heart-stopping, ditto a fierce ‘Pinball’, a flawless ‘Go To The Mirror’ with its ‘See Me/Listening’ preview, and Pete’s seat-of-the-pants jamming after ’Listening To You’ at the very end.

But, but, but… and I think I have complained about this before on Facebook but not on Just Backdated… for reasons unexplained, when we get to ‘I’m Free’, it’s obvious to anyone with ears, let alone any knowledge of The Who, that this and much of what follows (‘Tommy’s Holiday Camp’, ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ but not the coda of ’See Me Feel Me’) is from a different concert, in fact – as I realised later after a discussion with Andy Neill – Swansea in 1976.

I’d hit the A3 past Surbiton when it all suddenly went wrong, ‘I’m Free’ crashing out of the speakers and sounding so utterly and so obviously that it had been recorded at a different show as to really piss me off. In his usual warm introduction before 'Overture' Pete had explained that the show was recorded simply, with just two strategically positioned mikes, and this is what we hear until this point. The Swansea show, however, was recorded on Ronnie Lane’s 16-track mobile, so the whole sound from this point on is suddenly very different, much fuller, changed in every way in fact. Less obvious but still discernible, especially to those who know their Who, is that the group played differently in 1976 than they did in 1969. Pete is using a Les Paul guitar, which has a sharper tone than the SGs he used on the early Tommy shows, and he improvised more, probably the result of having played Tommy, or at least selections from it, countless times since 1969. Roger’s voice has deepened, improved even, and Keith is more abandoned, hitting his cymbals more than he did in 1969, perhaps to compensate for his increasing lack of discipline across the skins. Only John, eternally ill-disposed to change, sounds the same.

Strangely, the 1969 Ottawa show cuts back into the 1976 Swansea show during the intro to ‘See Me, Feel Me’ – you can hear the bad join at 1:06 – but what follows is taken not from the end of the full-length Tommy they played at Ottawa but from the reprise of Tommy excerpts within the extended ‘My Generation’ jam later in the show, as evidenced by their singing the two ‘Listening To You’ verses only once (as opposed to four times at Tanglewood, Leeds, Hull, etc, interspersed with solos), Pete’s lengthy improvisation at the end (as opposed to ending a full-length Tommy recital with the ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ riff, the 1969/70 norm) and the fact that Pete, Roger and Keith acknowledge the applause from the crowd at the close, thus indicating the entire concert is over. So it’s not really a complete 1969 performance of Tommy as advertised on the package after all.

Now I’m not suggesting the Tommy songs from Swansea are below par – on the contrary, like the rest from Ottawa, they’re fabulous, especially the climax to the ‘My Generation’ jam – but it irks me that so little attention has been paid to detail and continuity; not only has fans’ intelligence been underestimated but there’s an attempt – and a poor one at that – to mislead them as well. It is especially hard to swallow when the bells and whistles version of Tommy 2013 costs as much as it does and it is incorrectly packaged. When it was over, after filling up with gas at Ripley, I put on the original Tommy CD, and cranked up ‘Underture’ for the remainder of the journey home. I love this track, and it sort of restored my faith in my all time favourite rock band but I was still pissed off that this live Tommy had been unnecessarily tainted in the way it had.

LITTLE WILLOW

Mention of Maureen Starkey in yesterday’s post reminds me of the only time I met her, at a party at a house belonging to Isaac Tigrett in, I think, 1989. The party had been arranged to welcome to the UK my Russian friend Artemy Troitsky who two years earlier had sent me the manuscript of a book we called Back In The USSR, a history of rock music in the Soviet Union, and somehow or other he’d become acquainted with Isaac. The story behind this book – the manuscript was smuggled out of Russia to me by the Guardian’s then Moscow correspondent Martin Walker in his ‘diplomatic’ bag – deserves a post in itself but that will have to wait for now.

Artemy visited the UK for the first time to promote his book in 1987, the year it was published, and endeared himself to, among others, Paul McCartney, Richard Branson, Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel and U2. On this subsequent visit he was accompanied by his first wife, Svetlana, and the three of us went to Isaac’s welcoming party together. It was held in his small but elegant house in Mayfair, behind Mount Street near Berkeley Square, and was attended by several music industry types, the owner of Tower Records as I recall, Chrissie Hynde and, of course, Isaac himself, a generously built American gentleman with a flowing beard who was dressed in a kaftan and reminded me a bit of the Maharishi Yogi.

At some stage during the party I found myself conversing with Isaac about rock memorabilia. It was no secret that he was one of the biggest collectors in the world and that parts of his collection, mainly gold albums and guitars that had been used by star players, was exhibited in the Hard Rock restaurants, of which he was the founder, across the globe. I told him about my postcard from John Lennon and he smiled benignly.

“Would you like me to show you my favourite piece of Beatles memorabilia?” he asked.

“Of course.”

To which he moved across the crowded room and returned with Maureen. “My wife, the former Mrs Ringo Starr,” he said, introducing her to me. “Their children are somewhere around here too.”

         

THE BEATLES – Pools of Sorrow, Waves of Joy

Cynthia Lennon reached the age of 75, and in writing about her leaving us yesterday I remarked that she was the latest in a long line of deaths of those closely associated with The Beatles, reminding myself of how so many Beatle people are no more and how so many of them left us tragically early. John heads the list, of course, callously murdered in 1980, with George following, a victim of cancer in 2001, but there are many others, both from The Beatles’ inner circle and from its outer fringes, who died too young, an unusually large number in fact.

The first, tragically in view of his potential as a painter, was John’s friend Stuart Sutcliffe who died from a cerebral haemorrhage in Hamburg in 1962. His value to The Beatles as a musician may have been questionable but his influence on the way they presented themselves is incalculable.

Then there was their manager Brian Epstein who in 1967 succumbed to what is believed to have been an accidental overdose of sleeping pills, and whose death seems to have presaged the slow and agonising separation of the group. Even more mysterious was the suicide by hanging a year later of Epstein and The Beatles’ lawyer David Jacobs who was at the heart of the Seltaeb fiasco in which countless millions were squandered over The Beatles’ merchandising rights.

Their roadie and general assistant Mal Evans was next to fall, killed by a policeman in a bizarre shoot-out in Los Angeles in 1976. Two other pillars of The Beatles’ support mechanism, Derek Taylor and Neil Aspinall, died in 1997 and 2008 respectively, both from cancer. Brian’s brother Clive, who had inherited Brain’s interests in The Beatles but all too quickly divested them, died in 1988, two years after their music publisher Dick James, the initiator of Northern Songs, succumbed to a heart attack. Allen Klein, who took over the helm of the good ship Apple for a while but then fell out with everyone, died in 2009.

Within The Beatles’ own families there was John’s mother Julia, the victim of a road accident in 1958, two years after Paul’s mother Mary died from cancer. The same illness took Linda McCartney, Paul’s first wife, in 1998, and Maureen Starkey, Ringo’s ex-wife who went on to marry Hard Rock Café founder Isaac Tigrett, died from leukaemia in 1994.

On the outer fringes of The Beatles’ circle we have mourned Rory Storm (1972), Pete Ham (1975) and Tommy Evans (1983) of Badfinger, their childhood friend Ivan Vaughan (1993) and Dezo Hoffman (1986), the photographer who in 1963 created the lasting image of the Fab Four in their matching grey suits with collarless jackets. John’s great friend and ally Harry Nilsson died in 1994.

There may be others that I’ve overlooked but all these played a role, some great and some less so, in creating the magic of The Beatles, and as yet another of this extended family – Cynthia – goes to her rest I mourn them all and give thanks for what they did.