Your personal British Invasion top-ten countdown

Canard

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The Honeycombs, a London group, I think.

Wild Burns guitars (I think)!

A female drummer in 1964!!!! Cool big hair. :cool:

The rhythm guitarist looks like he might be a 60s MI5/6 agent, backup for Michael Caine in a Harry Palmer film.

The one big hit that got radio play globally.

 
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The Applejacks are very much in the also-ran category. They must have been AWOL when the invasion transport ships crossed the Atlantic. I know about them only because of their bass player who is mentioned in the Honey Lantree clip Mr. Ashton posted above.

They seemed to have had a bad relationship with their label, Decca, the label that turned down the Beatles..

They never made a dent in any charts outside the UK -- their records may not have even been released outside the UK..

But John Lennon and Paul McCartney met them and liked them well enough to pen a song for them to give them a song (technical correction by Walrus :)), but not even that helped them much.

The Lennon and McCartney tune:






 
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Chad and Jeremy 1965.jpg
 
walrus

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Canard said:
The Applejacks are very much in the also-ran category. They must have been AWOL when the invasion transport ships crossed the Atlantic. I know about them only because of their bass player who is mentioned in the Honey Lantree clip Mr. Asherton posted above.

They seemed to have had a bad relationship with their label, Decca, the label that turned down the Beatles..

They never made a dent in any charts outside the UK -- their records may not have even been released outside the UK..

But John Lennon and Paul McCartney meet them and liked them well enough to pen a song for them, but not even that helped them much.

The Lennon and McCartney tune:






Click to expand...


Actually, Paul wrote "Like Dreamers Do" in 1959 and the Beatles recorded it during their unsuccessful Decca auditions in 1962. Like several other early Lennon/McCartney songs, they gave it way a few years later.



walrus
 
walrus

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When Lennon/McCartney wrote "World Without Love" they decided to give it away immediately, they thought it was too corny!

Who better to get it than Peter and Gordon, especially when Peter Asher was the brother of Jane Asher, Paul's steady girlfriend at the time.

McCartney also wrote "Woman", "Nobody I Know" and "I Don't Want To See You Again" for Peter and Gordon. For "Woman" he used the name "Bernard Webb" to see if he could have a hit without anyone knowing it was him, but everyone figured it out anyway.




BTW, Asher later became a very successful manager of artists such as James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, JD Souther, and Bonnie Raitt.

walrus
 
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Peter Asher's place was apparently newly done up in a Norwegian pine wall panelling that was newly introduced to the UK. Lennon thought it was ugly. Whatever the song, Norwegian Wood, suggests happened happened at Asher's place.

So I lit a fire, isn't it good
Norwegian Wood?.

Lennon's veiled threat of arson?

 
walrus

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Canard said:
Peter Asher's place was apparently newly done up in a Norwegian pine wall panelling that was newly introduced to the UK. Lennon thought it was ugly. Whatever the song, Norwegian Wood, suggests happened happened at Asher's place.

So I lit a fire, isn't it good
Norwegian Wood?.

Lennon's veiled threat of arson?

Click to expand...


Right - in Barry Miles' bio of McCartney, he said McCartney said Norwegian wood was a reference to cheap paneling that came out at the time.

To your point abut arson, McCartney also said, "In our world the guy had to have some sort of revenge. It could have meant I lit a fire to keep myself warm, and wasn't the decor of her house wonderful? But it didn't, it meant I burned the f***ing place down as an act of revenge, and then we left it there and went into the instrumental."

It's possible Rubber Soul is my favorite Beatles album, but then I listen to Revolver and change my mind.

walrus
 
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Rocky said:
And I thought it was about Picea abies. Happy holidays!
Click to expand...
What the song is about is highly debatable. It contains a some imaginative free associative rambling. Your interpretation is probably as good as anyone else's.

What inspired the title and an couple of lines may have been Asher's ugly pine panelling, but I do not think that is what the song is about -- at best this, the title and the lines, may be a very small inside joke hidden in a beautiful and ambiguous little song.

Happy holidays back at you. :)
 
walrus

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No debate - Lennon himself said it was about an extramarital affair.

From "All We Are Saying", a book of interviews with Lennon by David Sheff:

"Norwegian Wood’ is my song completely. It was about an affair I was having. I was very careful and paranoid because I didn’t want my wife, Cyn, to know that there really was something going on outside of the household. I’d always had some kind of affairs going, so I was trying to be sophisticated in writing about an affair, but in such a smoke-screen way that you couldn’t tell. But I can’t remember any specific woman it had to do with".

walrus
 
Canard

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walrus said:
No debate - Lennon himself said it was about an extramarital affair.

From "All We Are Saying", a book of interviews with Lennon by David Sheff:

"Norwegian Wood’ is my song completely. It was about an affair I was having. I was very careful and paranoid because I didn’t want my wife, Cyn, to know that there really was something going on outside of the household. I’d always had some kind of affairs going, so I was trying to be sophisticated in writing about an affair, but in such a smoke-screen way that you couldn’t tell. But I can’t remember any specific woman it had to do with".

walrus
Click to expand...
Thank you. I had not realised that Lennon had stopped being coy about it. I can now proudly say I have been Walrused.

The Peter Asher story I got from my son who is a Beatles obsessive. He has books and collections of magazine articles and interviews. The version of the story about there being a mock threat of arson, came for a Beatles insdier (don't remember who now).

There is an interesting article here which tries to pull everything together and tie up all the loose ends:

"Norwegian Wood" by The Beatles. The in-depth story behind the songs of the Beatles. Recording History. Songwriting History. Song Structure and Style.

www.beatlesebooks.com
 
Canard

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The Swinging Bluejeans, another Merseybeat group.

I never had any of their records but some of my friends did. I liked them a lot at the time, so I don't know why I didn't buy their stuff. They came out of the gate hot but then sort of fizzled.







 
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