YESTERDAY – Film Review

A world without The Beatles is not somewhere I would want to live, but this is the unlikely scenario on which this strange, occasionally enjoyable but ultimately flawed fantasy film is based. It’s far too cute for my liking, with laboured jokes, inexplicable plot twists and a soppy, all too predictable, ending. Also, for those unfamiliar with The Beatles – and there’s probably a few such folk now we’ve reached 2019 – there’s a lack of backstory that fails to celebrate the group and their songs to the extent that they merit.

         It’s the present day (I think) and for reasons unexplained there’s a worldwide power failure during which Jack (Himesh Patel), a struggling singer songwriter, is knocked from his bike and rendered unconscious. He wakes up to discover that no one remembers, or is even aware of, The Beatles, or Coca-Cola or cigarettes or Oasis for that matter. This realisation comes across subtly, at first anyway, with quizzical faces appearing when Jack quotes a lyric or, more importantly, accompanies himself singing ‘Yesterday’ to a group of friends who believe he’s written it himself.

         Among the friends is Ellie (Lily James), his manager-cum-roadie-cum-cheerleader, who provides the romantic spark as their platonic relationship grows into something more meaningful. Meanwhile Jack tries desperately to recall as many Beatles songs as he can, mostly predictable choices like ‘Help’, ‘She Loves You’ and ‘Let It Be’, and performs them as if they were his own. The audiences get bigger, a five-track demo gets airplay, his career gets lift-off and along comes admiring Ed Sheeran, playing himself, to offer Jack a support slot on his world tour.

         So far so good, but the first indication that we’re approaching naff territory is the arrival of Debra (Kate McKinnon), playing Sheeran’s American manager, who takes Jack under her wing to make him a star. Someday a screenwriter or director will have the balls to portray a music business manager as a caring, nurturing character whose priority really is the welfare of their client and not a money-grabbing monster, but in Debra we have the trite clichéd version, the US equivalent of the way Dick James was portrayed in Rocketman, the movie based on the life and music of Elton John.

         Thereafter the film sinks into a rather banal love story and the Beatles angle becomes secondary to Jack and Ellie’s will they/won’t they relationship. With the awful Debra pulling the strings and a double album of ‘self-penned’ Beatle songs in the bag, Jack is primed to become the biggest star the world has ever known. Then he’s confronted by his conscience, aided and abetted by a couple of unrelated punters who arrive on the scene and, like him, happen to remember The Beatles, so he forsakes all, shacks up with Ellie and everyone lives happily ever after. There’s an unexpected and, frankly, unnecessary twist at the end in questionable taste that I won’t reveal here but, like much of everything else, it merely accelerates the inevitable cheesy conclusion. The closing, appallingly twee, scene sees Jack reduced to singing ‘Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da’ to a bunch of kids at the school where Ellie is a teacher, but the conundrum on which the film is based – the genesis of the songs – remains annoyingly unresolved.

         I have no quarrel with Patel or James who play their parts well, though Patel does seem a tad detached, with the film carrying him instead of the other way around. James is her usual, attractive bubbly self, amusingly switching with ease from the three-blokes-in-as-many-weeks promiscuity of Donna in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again to the chaste, we’ve-known-one-another-for-years-but-haven’t-shagged-yet Ellie. Nor do I have much quarrel with Danny Boyle, whose direction is as lively as you would expect. No, the culprit here is screenwriter Richard Curtis who has simply used the music of The Beatles and the ludicrous conceit of their not having existed as a vehicle for yet another rom-com that is little more than a retread of his other, similar, scripts (Four Weddings, Notting Hill, et al) wherein a couple of long acquaintance or differing circumstances don’t realise they’re attracted to each other romantically until something eventually happens that makes them realise they do.  

         I’ve read that Paul and Ringo ‘support’ the film and that its release has sent John and Paul to number four in the Rock Songwriters Chart, whatever that it is. Well that’s great but they, The Beatles that is, deserve better than Yesterday.

PAUL McCARTNEY, JUNIOR’S FARM & MM’s MAN DAN

Let's go let's go 

Down to Junior's Farm where I want to lay low
Low life, high life, go let's go 
Take me down to Junior's Farm
Everybody tag along
Take me down to Junior's Farm

My discovery of photographs of The Beatles at the Gaumont Theatre in Bradford has had an unexpected repercussion in that they, and the accompanying Just Backdated post, were seen by Dan Ealey who, in 1974, called me in New York from Tennessee applying for the job of Nashville correspondent for Melody Maker.

         Part of my job as MM’s US editor in those days was to appoint and maintain a string of correspondents in big cities around the country who would send me stories and reviews of important shows happening locally that I hadn’t covered myself in New York. Dan’s phone call was motivated by news of an impending visit to the area by Paul McCartney & Wings and the likelihood that Paul might do something newsworthy, like hold a press conference or even stage a small private show. In the event he did neither but this didn’t deter Dan, a massive Beatles fan, from calling me to claim he was an experienced reporter, which he wasn’t, and extracting from me the letter below that confirms his appointment as ‘Melody Maker’s representative’. There is sometimes a fine line between initiative and deceitfulness but I’m willing, especially now, to give Dan the benefit of the doubt and warmly applaud his resourcefulness.

         Armed with my letter Dan set out to find out where Paul, Linda and the rest of Wings were staying. It turned out to be a farm belonging to songwriter Curly ‘Junior’ Putnam – writer of ‘Green Green Grass Of Home’ – at Lebanon in Wilson County, Tenn. Dan arrived at the farm gates, brandished my letter and was invited to drive in, whereupon he clocked Denny Laine and Jimmy McCulloch on the lawn and opened up a conversation by asking them to demonstrate how to play the opening lick to ‘Band On The Run’. Jimmy obliged, using a Les Paul that belonged to his bandmate who was with him and which just happened to be in back seat of his car, as did Dan’s Rickenbacker bass which Paul borrowed for three weeks. In that time Dan became a bit of a fixture at the farm, doing odd jobs, manning the gate and generally making himself useful.

         Dan had his picture taken with Paul who wore a fancy embroidered shirt that Dan had given him, and was on gate duty the night that Jerry Reed, Chet Atkins and Roy Orbison arrived for supper. He also smuggled a tape recorder into the grounds and recorded Wings rehearsing, not just familiar material like ‘Let Me Roll It’, ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ and ‘My Love’ but a new song that turned out to be ‘Junior’s Farm’, inspired, of course, by the location.

         I never heard from Dan again, which is probably not surprising; no reports of Paul’s activities in the Bible Belt, no insightful revues of country stars at the Grand Ole Opry, no speculation on who might become the next big thing from the home of C&W. In truth, I forgot all about Dan and the letter I wrote, probably because these correspondents from around the USA came and went pretty quickly, no doubt because the rewards were miniscule even they did bring about free tickets to gigs.

         That is, until two days ago. It seems Dan’s brush with Paul & Wings has made him something of a local celebrity, and this week he sent me clips from two TV shows in which he tells his story, with my letter featuring in both. And if they make me look like the victim of an ingenious ruse, then, like Rhett Butler, frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.  

Dan and Denny Laine with the Rickenbacker bass, 43 years apart. Dan sold it in late 1974 but chased it for 42 years, finally retrieving it in 2017.

AVERAGE WHITE BAND

A visit to Sainsburys is never complete without stopping by the CD shelves where, like Ronnie Lane’s dad, I’m looking for a bargain. This week I spot a logo that brings back some happy memories, made up from the initials AWB with the W rounded in such a way as to suggest the outline of a woman’s shapely derriere, a design that might arouse some anxiety in 2019 but in 1974, when it made its debut, caused not a ripple.
        Gold, a triple CD set by The Average White Band, offers 45 tracks for £5, or 11.1p per song, which is certainly good value for money but it probably means that after deductions several years will elapse before the boys in the band, whoever they might be today, make enough from it to pay my grocery bill, which this morning amounted to £106.80.
        Nevertheless, I stick Gold in my trolley and when I get back home I listen again to ‘Pick Up The Pieces’, the effortlessly catchy instrumental that topped the US singles charts in February 1975, simultaneously sending the album from whence it came, AWB, to the top of the US LP charts as well. Briefly, then, this 5/6^ths Scottish and 1/6^th English soul/R&B group was the biggest band in the world and as Melody Maker’s man in America in those days it was my job to track them down, which I did. And they turned out to be as genial a bunch of Highlanders it’s ever been my pleasure to ken.
        In early 1975 they were living on the tip of Long Island, the densely populated island that extends for 120 miles or so eastwards from New York City. I took the train, through Freeport and Patchogue, and as I chugged along on that crisp February morning I discovered that the farther you travel the less populated the island becomes until you reach the easternmost tip where the rich people live, out in the Hamptons, Great Gatsby land. Here I took a taxi from the station and pulled up outside a grand mansion that belonged to Ahmet Ertegun, the boss of Atlantic Records, and inside, a bit gobsmacked at their good fortune, I found five Scottish musicians and a newly recruited black guy from Brighton called Steve. As I informed MM’s readers, “they play rhythm and blues music with such authority that the majority of Americans think they’re all black musicians. They spend their days kicking a fitba’ around the grounds of one of Ahmet Ertegun’s many mansions, and their nights creating music under the baton of some of the greatest rhythm and blues producers on the Atlantic label.”
        I discovered that a family of 13 occupied the house: six musicians in the band, a couple of roadies, three WAGS, manager Bruce McCaskill and one small child belonging to tenor player Malcolm ‘Molly’ Duncan. The big house had a big room, probably intended as a ballroom, where the AWB’s instruments were set up, and I listened to them rehearse for a while before we sat down to talk. They gathered round to tell me their story, which was not without its share of ill fortune, and a week later MM carried my long report about the band and its history, almost 3,000 words, which can be found on the website Rock Back’s Pages should anyone care to look.

This was the AWB that I knew: back - Alan Gorrie, Onnie McIntyre, Roger Ball; front - Hamish Stuart, Molly Duncan, Steve Ferrone. (Pic downloaded from internet, photographer unknown.)

         Realising their fortunes lay in the US, they had decided to settle in the New York area for at least a year and probably longer, and when they weren’t on tour I would bump into them in and around NY’s music clubs over the next 18 months or so. As transplanted Brits, we enjoyed one another’s company but their success wasn’t to last. It rarely did for white bands that played this type of music, no matter how competently, and soon there was strong competition from several US acts – Earth, Wind & Fire, The Ohio Players, Parliament-Funkadelic among them – whose colour was no doubt in their favour with audiences. Still I reckon the guys in the AWB will look back on the spring of 1975 as a once in a lifetime experience that none of them ever regret.
        There are two footnotes to my story.
        In 1979, back in the UK and working in the press office at RCA Records, I became, briefly, the AWB’s PR when they released an album called Feel No Fret. They were as surprised to see me in this capacity as I was to see them on RCA, and I went to watch them play up in Scotland, headlining an open air event where local fans treated them as homecoming heroes.
        In 1990 my photo researcher at Omnibus Press was Mary McCartney, daughter of you know who, and in August of that year she celebrated her 21^st birthday with a party at the family farm near Rye to which I was invited, along with a guest who just happened to be the future Mrs C. Among the other guests was Molly Duncan, a pal of Mary’s, whose wife, it turned out, was the proprietor of a small boutique hotel close to London’s Royal Albert Hall. My friendship with Molly briefly rekindled, Lisa and I spent our wedding night there following a small reception in the bar.
              
The Average White Band are still going, though only bassist Alan Gorrie and guitarist Onnie McIntyre are left from the six I met that February day in Ahmet’s house on Long Island. Hamish Stuart would join Paul McCartney’s band for a period in the late eighties and early nineties, and also Ringo’s All Starrs, while Steve Ferrone became an in-demand session and live drummer whose CV now includes Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, Eric Clapton, The Bee Gees and a slew of other big names.
        But before I finish, let’s revisit the sessions in Miami that produced ‘Pick Up The Pieces’ and other tracks from that super successful ‘white’ album. While there they stumbled on an Aretha Franklin session that was taking place in the studio where they were scheduled to record. “It was the day we arrived,” Alan Gorrie told me. “We were told we could come down and look in on the session and we thought phew... ee. When we got there everybody was just slavering. She was sitting down playing the piano and all our heroes were there in one long line. Tom Dowd was conducting and Jerry Wexler and Arif Mardin were working in the control room.
        “We tried to take photographs and couldn’t hold the camera straight. We’d never heard anything like it. When they’d finished all the musicians packed up their instruments and left and Arif said, ‘O.K. You next’. We went in and used the same drum kit, the same amps. It was like being at school or having a kick around at Wembley.”
        By the way, ‘… Pieces’, ‘Work To Do’, ‘Let’s Go Round Again’ and ‘Queen Of My Soul’ sound as good as they ever did.