My Favourite Beatles Song
My Favourite Beatles Song
Martha My Dear – Stuart Maconie
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Tim is joined by broadcaster, author and DJ Stuart Maconie to explore Martha My Dear. They examine its musical sophistication, McCartney’s melodic genius, and the song’s place within the strange, kaleidoscopic world of the White Album, alongside reflections on Beatles history, culture and myth.
Guest links
- With a Little Help From Their Friends (UK edition): https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/with-a-little-help-from-their-friends-the-beatles-changed-the-world-but-who-changed-theirs-stuart-maconie?variant=54870051815803
- With a Little Help From Their Friends (US edition): https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/with-a-little-help-from-their-friends_9781419789571/
- Stuart Maconie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stumaconie/
- Radcliffe and Maconie on Radio 6: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0100rp6
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Original music by Joe Kane
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Welcome to my favourite Beatles song, the podcast where we celebrate the music of the Beatles with a distinguished guest. I'm Tim Tucker, and with me today is DJ, television presenter, writer, journalist, and critic Stuart McConey. Welcome, Stuart.
SPEAKER_01Morning, Tim. How are you?
SPEAKER_06Sounding a little croaky.
SPEAKER_01I have a little bit of a Lurgy, but I'm if it's not too distracting for the listeners, I'm very much prepared to give it a go because I'm very excited to talk to you.
SPEAKER_06Great. Well, um, I always start by asking guests um three key Beatles-related questions. Ones I'm sure you've answered before, but for the purposes of this audience, your first memory of the Beatles?
SPEAKER_01Well, that's an interesting one for me and will involve a minor plug of my latest book. My first memory that I absolutely know I have can can categorically vouch for is being upstairs in my cousin Elizabeth and Eileen Tyson's Swinton in Manchester and hearing Can't Buy Me Love on the radio, and thinking and depending when it came out, it may have been you know that it was a hit of a year before or something like that. So I can't be sure how old I was, but I was a small toddler, I was a toddler, and I remember hearing it and seeing how excited they were and thinking this is one of the most exciting things I've ever heard. Even at that young age, I knew there was something viscerally thrilling about the sound coming out of the maybe it was a dancette, maybe it was a transistor radio, I don't know what. So that's the first one I can categorically sort of vouch for. Um but uh the pretend memory I've got, which is an event that I know I was at, uh, is that I saw the Beatles. My mum took me to see the Beatles in 1964 as a tiny babe in arms almost. At Wigan ABC Cinema. Uh they did two shows, they did Hapast 6 and Hap Past Eight. I assume we were at Hapast 6. My mum went God rest her soul, she's no longer with us. But when I asked her about this, obviously in later life, I really wanted to know everything about this, and her memories are so vague. It's in a book called uh Cider with Rhodies that I wrote it. It's all her memories are incredibly vague about you know, she takes me to see the most potent cultural force of the 20th century, if not ever, in terms of pop culture, and um she doesn't remember anything about it, what they played or anything, but she remembers everything about the day, like where we ate, where we ate afterwards, and how we queued up and what she was wearing and things like that. So I I said inside with Rhodes, I was obviously destined to be a music journalist, as I all the subsidiary things about clothes and food and drink and what I what she felt like are all in there, and absolutely no factual information of any use to future historians. Um and so I for I pretend sometimes I remember that, um, but I don't think I've got any memory of it. And the interesting thing is Mark Lewison sent me some pictures or put me on the route to getting some pictures very kindly of that show, and in one of them that I've found, I think you can see me and my mum, but there is some debate. We didn't include it in my most recent book with a little help from their friends about the Beatles, we didn't include it because we couldn't be a hundred percent sure that it was Wigan and not the night before in Edinburgh or that week in Edinburgh at the ABC, and weirdly, when another young mum would take their little baby to see them. So I uh we couldn't the Americans have used it, the American edition's coming out in a month or so. The Americans have no compunctions about this. They've said, Yeah, we'll use that, but we in Britain felt a bit more assiduous to the truth. So, but yeah, here in Carol Downville is the first one I can vouch for, but clearly, if I could remember it, seeing the Beatles is the first one.
SPEAKER_06You may access that later in life. People say, don't they, as you get older, you access earlier memories, right?
SPEAKER_01That's uh that's a brilliant. Maybe I interviewed Darren Brown yesterday or the day before. I interviewed Darren Brown. Maybe I should get Darren, maybe I should have got Darren to reaccess my Beetle memory.
SPEAKER_06That's a great idea, yeah. A favourite period? Would you say like early mop tops, middle psychedelia, or hairy, scary late beetles?
SPEAKER_01That's such a difficult one. That is such a difficult one because I love every I mean everyone who comes on your podcast will service. I love every Beatle period. I just love them in different ways because let me give you a roundabout answer. I'm I've become very interested in the Beatles, not just as a joyous musical force, which they are to enjoy their records, but like a lot of people, I've become very interested in the social and cultural dimension of the Beatles, how they are woven into the story of our culture, our country, world culture. So I'm very interested in, as my last book is about, as well as just the Beatles' music, and some people are just interested in the Beatles' music, I guess, but I'm interested in the history and the historiography of the Beatles, I'm interested in what they say about masculinity, fashion, politics, class, the entertainment world. So, because of that, every period is interesting because the Beatles are inventing the modern world as they go, aren't they? You know what I mean? That's what fascinates me. The Beatles invent the modern world with everything they do. So but the moment I'm probably most fascinated by, I think, is probably I guess I guess around 67 shading to 68, when the Beatles everything the Beatles do seems to have both a sense of mystery and a slightly sinister edge. Do you know what I mean? Oh yeah. Even a song like Fool on the Hill, which ostensibly is just a beautiful, beautiful song, there's a real sense, there's something sinister about that song, I think. What is he about? Who is the fool on the hill, and what does he want to do? And that vibe runs through cry baby, cry, um being for the benefit of Mr. Kite, um, it that slight sense of the childlike, the mystical, and the magical, but shading into the slightly um uncanny and eerie is something the Beatles do brilliantly at that period. So I'm slightly fascinated by that. I don't know if that was the drugs, I don't know if that was just what I don't think it was. I think that's a very glib answer to just ascribe everything the Beatles did at this point to drugs, and I don't think it was, particularly not Maca, who's not really indulging. Um, but I love that period when the period at which the the dear late Queen is supposed to have said after watching Magical Mystery 2, isn't she supposed to have said the Beatles have gone awfully weird or something like that? Yeah, but I well I like that bit, yeah.
SPEAKER_06I think yeah, and the White album's suffused with that sort of uh menace.
SPEAKER_01I I I love that I love the uh the story that you know they wanted of course you know this, they wanted to call it a doll's house. Perfect, yeah, and they wanted the cover to be like a doll's house with different little rooms. That is the perfect title for it. With these little rooms, each room you open a door and you're in Rocky Raccoon, or you're in Piggies, or you're in Crack Baby Cry, or you're in with Bungalow Bill. I I absolutely love that. And then Family from Leicester made put out a doll's house, I think, a couple of months before, and the Beatles never wanting to be second to anything. Said, well, we're not calling it that anymore. We'll just call it the Beatles, yeah.
SPEAKER_06When uh Adam S. Leslie came on to talk about Revolution 9, he said it if it is a doll's house, white the white album, it's a haunted doll's house.
SPEAKER_01It is a haunted doll's house, yeah, and it's got fun bits and it welcomes you in, you know, with the with this, but it welcomes you in with sort of excitingly. Um, but then quite early on things go quite strange, don't they? And yeah, I love it. And I love the way that little I mean, that little fragment of Macca's. Can you take me back? It you know, that I don't know why that is so spooky. Is it context because you know revolution number nine is going to come? But yeah, I I I um I I love that period, and it is, as you say, absolutely um the the white album distills and crystallizes that period of the Beatles, where they're brilliant, experimental, still uh still making great pop records, but with a sense of the macabre almost about them, yeah.
SPEAKER_06And um, of course, you mentioned we'll talk more about your new book, um, or your latest book, I should say, um later. But having written that and other many books, have you met any of the Beatles or their entourage during that time?
SPEAKER_01I've met Paul McCartney, I think, three times. I never met John. John was dead while I was still doing my A levels. Um and and I never met George. I've no I still got time to meet Ringo, of course. I hope so. Um never met George, got quite close to it um a couple of times. When I was working for Q, you know, he's I'd be one of the journalists who'd say, Yeah, I can do that, but the way the way, you know, it's just the way jobs get divvied up. You know, I didn't get the George Arrison interview. Um Paul, I've met three times, I think, although I can only remember clearly two. Craig Brown in his book about the Queen, the late Queen, says nearly everyone who meets the Queen can't remember anything about it. And Manica's a bit like that, although I do remember two of them, but one of them I've forgotten completely, but two of them I do remember quite well because one was at the roundhouse in Camden, where he was about to play. There was a short-lived, ill-fated BBC venture called the Electric Proms that lasted a couple of years at the roundhouse, and Macca played it, and I went to interview him that afternoon before he played, and I remember that because we that's when I asked him, which is the starting point of my book, that's when I asked him, given everything, would you ever have have you ever even for a moment wished you'd been in Jerry and the pacemakers? Which I know what I meant, but obviously on reflection, it's such an idiotic question. I know what I meant. You could have had a fun, fulfilling life as a pop star, well remunerated, and all that. Such a stupid question with hindsight. I've spoken to uh you know my friend Katlin Moran said, I know exactly what you mean. I asked him something equally stupid. You feel compelled not to ask him the obvious things. The trick is with Maca, just let him do his thing, don't try and trip him up, Bobby's smart. But I was a callow youth, and I asked him that, and he he was hilarious about it. He looked at me and went, sorry. I and I said, It's okay, Paul. Let's move on to my next question. He said, No, no, no, no, no. What did you ask me? And I said, And it's really funny. He said, Did you ask me would I rather have been in Jerry and the pacemakers? And I said, Yeah, yeah, and yeah, I did ask you that, and he said, Um, you're aware that I was in the Beatles, aren't you, Stuart? And I said, Yeah, I'm very aware of that. Um, great answer. So that was one of them. And at the end of it, at the end of the interview, uh, I said, I do a show on six music called The Freak Zone, which is about experimental and avant-garde and sort of adventurous and playful and obscure music. And he said, Yeah, great. And I said, It was here, do you remember? It was here that you provided uh Carnival of Light for a happening here in whenever it was, '68. And he said, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I said, uh, any chance of letting me play it on my show? And he loads at me and he went, Good try. Um, and the other occasion was back, the other occasion was one of his arena gigs when he got back into playing live, you know, and he was playing Manchester, the arena in Manchester. And me and my friend Elizabeth Olcott, Radio 3 presenter and writer, went along and they said go to the sound check. And the two things we didn't realize is that Maca's sound checks are a gig. You know, there were fans, there are fans there, you pay a little bit extra to get the sound check, and he plays songs he doesn't do in the show. And there's 20 of you in the hall, and he talks to you, it's fantastic. And then we were told to wait in a little antechamber with um, you know, for Maca to arrive. And and he turned up, and he was great. And I remember I happened to say, Um, she neither of them will mind me saying this. I happened to say, I'm Stuart. And he was like, Oh, Stuart, we've met before, of course. He's light because he's such a charmer. Oh, Stuart, yeah, we've met before. And I said, And this is my friend, this is the lovely Elizabeth Holker. And he went, Oh, and she is lovely. And I thought, you old flirt, you've not lost it, which of course made her she was walking on her for the rest of the day, you know what I mean? And he said, I thought that was I thought that was absolutely lovely. I have no problem. There's some people say about Paul, yeah, he's so he's ever the diplomat and the charmer and the nice guy. And I go, and your problem is what? What exactly is your problem with that? Which I've met I've interviewed so many monosyllabic, surly, idiotic pop stars. You want them to be the cool ones are always like that. Bowie was like that, Scott Walker was like that. The cool ones, the drill geniuses, don't have to put on an act like a second-rate person. They can just, they know they are well assured of their own brilliance. So they can just be nice, you know.
SPEAKER_06The song you've chosen to discuss today is Martha My Dear. It was recorded on the 4th and 5th of October 1968 at Trident Studios in London. It was released on the White Album, uh so-called, actually called The Beatles, on 22nd of November 1968, in the UK and the 25th of November 1968 in the US. Obviously, that album went to number one in both territories and many more worldwide. So those are the facts. But what is it that uh drew you to this song to discuss today?
SPEAKER_01Slight preamble. I've been rehearsing my uh opening answer to this um in my head. I I was about to say I could have picked, because you sent me, you kindly sent me a list of what other people on the podcast have picked, and I thought it doesn't matter because I could pick any Beatles song. And then I thought that's not quite true, actually. I would not be able, apologies, I would not be able to make a case for your blues or the ballad of John and Yoko. I because I don't believe every single thing the Beatles ever committed to vinyl is brilliant. I believe every single thing they committed to vinyl is interesting because it's the Beatles. But I think if your blues had been made by The Who, I'd I'd never listen to it again as a piece of music, you know. But it's the Beatles, so I would. But I so back wanted to pick them off the idea though for a couple of reasons. It's from my favourite Beatles album, which is the White album, as we've discussed. It is it has a little of that sense of mystery we were talking about before. Not as much as some of the more obviously sinister or eerie ones, but there's still a little bit of mystery about it. That could be the subject matter or just there is something a little strange about it. When I first heard this when I was 12 or 13, and I just did think, what's going on with this record now, with all these funny little songs? What is going on? Um, and also it fits in with a thesis of mine that is becoming increasingly uh popular, I'm glad to say, which is that for years there's been this thing about Macca that uh as John said about Martha My Dear when I'm 64 and things, it's one of his granny songs. So I wanted to pick one of Paul's granny songs to show that they're brilliant. I think probably in the immediate aftermath of the Beatles, when the narrative was being driven by all those clothiers at Rolling Stones, sorry, but they were. It was this was an example of how the Beatles lost their way, you know, getting these pretty vaudeville tunes when they should have been, you know, wanting Maoist revolution. It's a brilliant song. It shows how brilliant Maca is as a self-taught musical. I think there's a case for saying Paul McCartney might be the most musical human being who has ever lived. And I think a lot of musicians, when I say that to them, go, Yeah, I get that, I get that. His facility with almost any instrument is phenomenal without knowing the dots, without having been trained. The piano playing on Martha Midea is brilliant, and he's and he's pretty much he pretty much set himself as a little exercise to see if he could do it, and it's fabulous, it's full of jazzy voicings, and you know, the left hand is doing interesting stuff, and there are interesting chordal stuff going on. So I wanted to pick one that just showed, I think, out how how how talented he is. I I say him, I say all the time, it's odious to pick in the set the Beatles against each other. The Beatles are an alchemical force. The four of them had to be there together at the right time for this to happen. And we know that because it didn't happen with Pete Best. Um, you know, so when people say, Oh, was Pete Best a better drummer than Ringo? Well, he wasn't, but it doesn't matter because what Ringo is, is a better Beatle.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01He's a better Beatle, and when Ringo enters the picture, the the firework goes off, you know, the the alchemical reaction happens. No, we have the Beatles, so it's uh it's odious, I think, to sort of say, Oh, I don't like George or I don't like Macker or whatever. That said, true Beatles fans are aware of their differences, I think. And I also think that just like the girls in the cabin in 61, 62, 62, it's okay to have a favourite, and Paul's my favourite.
SPEAKER_06One of the reasons people don't realize what a musical genius he is, is because it seems so easy to him. And there is that Mozartian thing, isn't it? Of it sort of flows so easily that it feels like, oh, there's no effort there. But actually, he has said that he worked hard at this one at working out the piano part because he taught himself, and this is when you get into it, it's really quite challenging, you know. Yeah, um, and it's beautifully done, isn't it? It sounds effortless, but it's not, you know.
SPEAKER_01Like like my dad used to say about Terry Wogan. My dad used to say about Terry Wogan on the radio. My god, he gets well paid for not doing anything. I said, No, Dad, he's making it sound like he's not doing anything. Anyone can make things sound like hard work. If you're a writer, it's very easy to write unreadable prose. If you're a musician, it's very easy to make unlistenable music. And and you can apply that, I think, to anything in art. The trick is to make it look easy, and but what you do when you do that is you risk critics underestimating you. I mean, I've had I've had kind of mildly reviews from my books have had this, and you realise they mean it in a mildly patronizing way. Very readable, as if that's a criticism, as if unreadable is a compliment, you know what I mean? Um so it's that mix what I say is this facility. I use that phrase facility, it's this brilliant facility with music that seems effortless, but I think, like you say about Mozart, it's you start to it's that you start to wonder are is music some supernatural thing in people's DNA? And Paul McCartney and Mozart would make you think it is that it's that from the I think you could give Paul McCartney anything, and within a couple of minutes he could get a song out of it. You could give him a psaltery or a harmonium or a tuba or whatever, and within a couple of minutes he could get a tune out of it, and probably a good tune as well.
SPEAKER_06Um that's well, that's the other thing, because he's um I think Andrew Lloyd Webber named him as one of the top three melodists of the 20th century, with I think Prokofia. Um Right. And I think his melodies, you know, people say, Oh, he writes lovely melodies again as if that's something that's easy to do.
SPEAKER_01That's something that's easy to do. And no, if you interesting, if you listen musically, Paul's melodies take you all over the place. John, and this isn't a criticism, it's just the truth. John's melodies tend to stay on one or two notes all the time. The most obvious being the police siren about the walls. But you look throughout John's music, and melodically they don't go very far along in the scale, they don't travel around a lot. Paul's do. I mean, even just the opening phrase of Martha Maddie is a beautiful filigre thing, isn't it? Yeah, it's wonderful.
SPEAKER_02You have always been my inspiration. Be good to me. Don't forget me.
SPEAKER_01If Paul McCartney hadn't been in the Beatles, I had no doubt we'd still know who Paul McCartney was. Someone that musically talented would have come through. But it wouldn't have been the same. It wouldn't have been the same, it wouldn't have been the Beatles. The joys that he happens, that for some reason that makes you almost spiritual or at least mystical, these four people are knocking around in post war Liverpool at the same time. And happen to f fall into each other's orbits. So that must sound uncanny, doesn't it? It's that I get like I I fli I I can give myself goosebumps. I said this in my talks, and I can feel the audience agreeing with it. I give myself goosebumps thinking about the Walton village fate. It's a summer afternoon, July, suburban Liverpool in the mid-1950s. There's a police dog display, there's some girl guides doing something, there's a stall with presumably drops, guns, and marrows and stuff like that, and people and all the people are milling about, and just over there, out of shot, or just in shot, two two teddy boys are walking into the scout hut, Ivan Vaughan and Paul McCartney, and they're going in there, and Paul McCartney is going to meet John Lennon, and the whole history of the world is going to change because of that moment in Walton in Liverpool. It freaks me out there, and it's brilliant, it's it's goose pimpling. The whole history of the world is going to change because not because of the thing a great man did, not because of something Churchill or Alexander the Great did, because what a midwife son who lived in a council house in Liverpool and his arty mate did, and that's another thing that's written the Beatles story that I get very emotionally attached to. The history of the world was changed from a council house in Liverpool from Fort Lynn Road, not from a palace, not from Blenham Palace, not from a castle. What four working class, three working class lads and one middle class lad from Liverpool changed the whole history of the world in a country that was beaten, that had nothing, but had well it had something, it had a belief in itself, and this is a different argument about what constituted Brunt a good way to run a country. So it was a country in which working class kids could go to art college and go to grammar school and things like that. Yeah, it's uh it freaks me out that that um but I think Paul would have come through anyway, but he wouldn't, we wouldn't have the Beatles, and we'd rather have the Beatles, you know.
SPEAKER_06Thank God he wasn't in Jerry and the pacemakers.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Maybe you'd have joined Jerry and the Pacemakers. I once I we did a thing once on telly. You can still get it on YouTube, it's good fun. We I we recreated me, I was the host, and I did the interviews and a gang of musicians, and we we replicated the Please Please Me recording. We went to Abbey Road, it's still on YouTube, we did it for BBC4. Mick Hutnell and Graham Cox and Ian Brody and a few other people. We got people to re-record in a day every track on Please Please Me and celebrate the anniversary of it and talk about people's love of the Beatles and stuff like that. Um it was in that that Graham Coxon said one of my favourite things when he said, which I agree with, he says he said you meet people who say I don't like the Beatles. And you want to say to them, what are you trying to prove? It's sheer affectation to say you don't like the Beatles. If you don't like the Beatles, you don't like pop music. It's sheer affectation. Um but another thing that happened in that, in that, in that um doing that is we interviewed as one of the sidebars a gang of people who'd been around the Mersey scene at the time, people who'd been like Harry Casey or Derry in the teen years, or and people like that, and some of the people who've been in some of the lesser players, maybe Jared and the pacemakers. Um and one of them said to me, There was about four of them, I was doing a little round table interview, and one of them said to me, The thing is, Stu, there were a million bands in Liverpool as good as the Beatles. There were like a hundred bands in Liverpool as good as the Beatles, just that they got the brakes, they had Epstein, they got the brakes. And silence fell. And then the others all went in, show up soft lad. The Beatles were way better than everybody else. And he went like, yeah, you're right. He gave it a shot, but he gave it a shot, but even he was shot then quite quickly. He thought, yeah, you're right. Why am I trying to why am I trying to essay this stupid idea? Yeah.
SPEAKER_06It seems it was written late in the White Album, like um almost as if, and this is weird because they had lots of songs for contenders and they they they left out songs, like you know, not guilty, but it's almost as if he was writing it to fit it on the album, and yet it's one of the most musical. Dominic Pebler calls it the closest to jazz in terms of its like its chord changes, like you say, it's got lots of sevenths and ninths, it's it changes key from E flat major to F major. It feels when you look into it much more sophisticated than it sounds, you know, on first listen, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. Another thing that I love uh about Maca is that um he he he'll presumably I mean, but he's a he's a skilled musician, he knows his way around the chords and skills, but he he will have sometimes the things will have fallen under his hands and he will have gone, oh that's nice, yeah, like that, and that could go there. And you see now I've read analysis of Mount My Dear in which people very detailed technical analysis about as you say, how the the the ninth on the augmented ninth Paul won't have known that, Paul won't have known what that chord is, but he has the he's got the musical genius to know that sounds great and it will go well with that. It's in the ear, knowing if I do that with my right hand, but if I do this with my left hand, it makes a whole new sound world open up. Yeah, you know, so and and and I do like you say about the number of songs. That's the other thing about the white album that I love, and I think Martha Mydear exemplifies this, which is why I've picked it. The the sheer diversity in fecundity that you can go from, you know, you can go from Hell to Skelter or Yer Blues to Martha My Dear or uh Honey Pie. You know, there's just so much going on in there, and that argument when people say they should have slimmed it down to make a great single album. No, you're missing the point. You're missing the point. The point is that it's sprawling and kaleidoscopic and universal, I think. You know, as and I love that on anthology, isn't Paul Paul addresses this on anthology brilliantly when he goes when he says, Oh, F off, it's the Beatles White album. I just love that. I love that.
SPEAKER_06Oh, F off, it's the Beatles White album. It's it's also in the lyrics, though, because it's an interesting approach to lyrics, Paul, and sometimes he gets very crafted, but sometimes he just goes with ideas. And this one obviously famously is about his dog, yeah, Martha.
SPEAKER_01Ah, or is it just about his dog? We'll come back to that, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Well, well, we'll talk about it now because then it goes into many people think perhaps reflections on his relationship with Jane Asher, or perhaps a visiting. He says in the lyrics book that a visiting relative had come and talked about a relationship. So that's real. It does seem to sort of merge in his head. I'm not sure if he crafted it that way, or he just let the words come out, which is you know.
SPEAKER_01I think, and it's just an impressionistic thing, I think that um although look what you've done, you silly girl, hold your head up. I think that's the dog-related stuff. But then there are other bits, don't for the don't forget me bit, which is strange, takes you somewhere else. That maybe that's about Jane Asher. But I love this idea that he mentions in the lyrics, doesn't he? He says that some relative from Liverpool came, and because he was a safe space, because he was an outsider, told him about this uh affair that they were having, and I said that's it really interesting. It's not just about a dog, I don't think. It's not just about a dog, because I don't think Paul could ever do something as basic as just write about a dog, however lovely that dog was. So I think there's other stuff going on that don't you don't don't forget me. I think he's wonderful how it takes you somewhere else. Why would the dog forget him? That's not about Martin the sheep dog. Little aside, I once went to um I I know Hunter Davis Little. I'm talking to you from Cumbria, where I've got a little place, and Hunter used to have a little place just down the road in Lowe's water, so we got to know each other a little. And I went to visit him in his London pad um once to do an interview for one of my one of my recent books. And he came to the door permatanned from his sojourns in Portugal or whatever, and he and he he said to me, and he opened the door, tumbler of wine, white wine. He won't mind me saying this until 10:30 in the morning, and he said, Come in, come in. He said, Right, before we do the interview, I want to show you my treasures because he's a collector of everything from Alfred Wainwright guidebooks to comics to and famously Beatle stuff. And he said, I want to show you. Come in. And as we walked past his the stairway, his stairwell, there was a huge picture of an old English sheepdog. And he said, Name that dog, please. And I said, Martha. And he went, Good, you've passed, you can come in. Password, yeah. Yeah, but it was like that, it was like that. And then I could tell you thought, right, okay, you're you're one of those, you're a mum's friends. And he showed me, and one of the brilliant things he did. I'm slightly going off the point now, but it's worth it. One of the things he showed me was he went to a filing cabinet and he took out a ziploc bag and he said, These are Paul McCartney's underpants. Which Paul and um Paul and Linda turn up, don't they? I think that Hunter's on holding Portugal in '68 with his family, and I don't know whether to just get away from the incipient madness. Basically, Paul just turns up and to stay with them for a few days, and apparently left a pair of his underpants behind, which Hunter, with his view to history that he's got, because he's like that, obviously thought, Oh, he's not getting those back and put them in a ziploc pack for posterity. They'll come in useful sometimes. They absolutely will. And I know Hunter's giving all his Beatle archive to the British Library, isn't he? Which maybe that'll be in there with them. That's lovely.
SPEAKER_06I mean, I I have to say, being a dog lover, that it touches me because I often think about my dog and when it goes and what that will mean. And you know, there is a and he does say that he was he it brought out a new side of him getting Martha, didn't he? Um and he said when John came round, John was quite surprised at how it had changed Paul having a dog and loving a dog. So there's part of that in the song, I think.
SPEAKER_01I get that. I I have dogs in my life, I and I've lost a uh a dog, about a dog in Mosley, and I know how crushing that is. So I I get that. I just don't think objectively it is just all about a dog. But Mac is genius still is. There are a lot of inferior songwriters who wanted to write a song about their dog would sing a song that went, I love you, my dog. You've been so great to me. You are a great companion, I take you for a walk. He's never gonna do that, is he? He's gonna do something much more nuanced and strange and symbolic than that.
SPEAKER_06Well, and I I want to bring this in because we do know what Martha sounds like because there's an interview on a radio radio interview they they uh John and Paul did as songwriters, uh, and it it was Cavendish, and um a dog starts howling in the background. That's Martha. That's the only time Martha was on tape um recorded.
SPEAKER_00Uh do you find yourselves able to write in this mood at a particular time of day or night?
SPEAKER_05Are you nighttime writers or you'll have to excuse the dog listeners, but he doesn't know we're on the radio. How old is this dog? Seven seven weeks actually, seven weeks, so it doesn't really understand about the BBC yet. What type of dog is it? What type is it going to be holding this sheepdog it will be eventually?
SPEAKER_06I I do buy your idea that and many people's idea that there's more to it than the the song to a dog. And I do think there's some as always, we were saying about his musical ability, there's a lot of depth to his feeling, isn't there? And um I think that take a look at things around you is interesting. It seems to echo the the line from Dear Prudence on the White Album about take a look around you. Yes, look around, look around.
SPEAKER_02Take a look a little bit.
SPEAKER_01I love that about the Beatles because after a certain point in say '66, they are clearly at some level, not a boastful level, but they become aware of their own significance. And I think they become aware that the Beatles is a thing that's bigger than just music. So you start to get references in songs to other songs. I mean, most obviously the Walrus was Paul and all that, but glass onion. But you you start to get a sense of them dropping in references to other ones of their songs or nodding to other lyrics, which I love that about it, because it builds this idea that the very accurate idea, they were more than just a band. They're a I don't want to go they're they're a not I don't want to say religion, that's a slightly spiritual thing to say, but they're a they're a they're an entity, they're some kind of cultural entity that's beyond just being a band, yeah. Yeah, and that is playful as well, that's how I love about it. The Beatles have a playfulness about them that none of their peers have. When people talk about the other people who are just it's there's no comparison, so I don't even know why people do it. The Beatles are not part, you know, the Beatles are not a British invasion band, you know, they're they're the Beatles, they're a thing of their own. Um, so when people compare them to the Kinks or the Who or the Stones, you think none of those bands, and they, if they would have been sensible, would admit it, I think, have that sense of playfulness, mystery, wit, intrigue that the Beatles have. You know, and then and it's exemplified in that that they're thinking, oh, let's drop in a reference to another song here, because that'll get them thinking, you know.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I mean they're they're very hard to pin down as a sound. This is what my objection to people saying they don't like the Beatles. I'm like, which Beatles don't you like? Which Beatles don't you like? So many of them. And and this song, it's hard to think of a precedent. I mean, it draws on jazz and show tunes and marching bands and you know, the brass and the strings. You know, it's hard to pin down the song. That's right, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And some of the brass has that feel of like um um like almost like the things that Tony Hatch would have been doing in the 60s, like with Patilla Clark, there's a kind of there's a kind of glamorous showbiz feel to it as well. Um, you're absolutely right about that, but which Beatles which Beatles don't you like? And that's when I said this thing about I once put it on social media that I thought Paul McCartney was the most musical human being he'd ever lived. And a few people herumphed and mentioned Bark and Handel and things like that. Music that I love, but I said, okay, what I mean is if you look at Bark's output or Handel's output, it's brilliant, but it goes from here to moves hand ten inches away to there. But look at the difference between Hellter Skelton yesterday, the Liverpool Oratorio, and temporary secretary. It's just this the sheer range of his musical imagination. That's what I mean, you know. I think he's incom incomparable because of that. The thing we should say as well is there's some debate about who plays on it, isn't there? For a for a long time, it's been thought that it's apart from the brass and strings, Paul does everything. But no, I think that that I think that's been countered now, isn't it?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, well, on the white album box set I've got, it says George and Ringo are on it, although there's no mention of John. And in the uh I've got a quote here actually, Mal Evans in the Beatles Book Monthly wrote that Ringo bashed a hole in his brand new bass skin drum on the night we started this track talking about this song. So um yeah, I think the evidence points the other way, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01The drums the drums sound like Ringo. I think the drums sound like Ringo, not Paul. And there's a picture that there's some there's some debate about whether it's accurate or not, but you've seen that picture purportedly at Trident where um the the brass players are sitting down and Paul and George are there. What some people dispute is that George looks really quite cheery and it's supposed to be four o'clock in the morning. People say, Would George have been so cheery doing one of Paul's songs at four o'clock in the morning? But anyway.
SPEAKER_06No, I mean the it the the fact is he could have played them all, couldn't he? And that's another part of your evidence of his musicality, is he's one of the few musicians in rock history who could play everything.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, he could have done, but but I think Paul's obviously a smart enough guy to realise the Ringo drum sound here. I another one of my bug birds, people who'd any great Ringo's drumming, you know. Ringo's a superb drummer. He you hear a couple of bars of me, you think that's Ringo. There's so many Beatles songs where what Ringo does, not so much this one, but there's so many songs like to the double flam at the end of She Loves You, to Tomorrow Never Knows. It's absolutely sensational drumming. So I don't think it I I hope it isn't just Paul, because I think I like the song more knowing that George and Ringo were there, going, yeah, this sounds fun, let's do it, you know.
SPEAKER_06It's never been played live, although um there is a snippet of him playing in 2015 at the Buddha can in Tokyo during one of those uh so sound checks. He has a little girl on the piano. Messes it up a bit because it's not under his fingers, I presume, but uh that's the only time it's surfaced in a kind of stage setting. Wow, I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01What I did know is that my old mucca, Noddy Holder, in the very early days of his skin when Slade would just change from Ambrose Slade, the Skinhead band, they used to do Martha Mydea. They didn't, I think they put it out as a single, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, and it it's um is it Jim Lee on the violin? Yeah, it's and it's Skinhead era as well.
SPEAKER_01It's such an odd song for Slade to have peaked. If you think of any of any Beatles song of that period, a skinhead band, Slade are gonna, you think, oh well, they're gonna do Hell to Skelter, or they're gonna do back in the USSR or Revolution, but it did Martha Mydea, it's so weird.
SPEAKER_06I've never seen skinners looking so concentrated on their instruments.
SPEAKER_01I know, it's fantastic, yeah.
SPEAKER_03My dear is in conversation.
SPEAKER_06The other thing is on get back, you get a little glimpse of Paul demonstrating it, yeah, to um to the engineer.
SPEAKER_01You do, and I just my one of my just about Paul at the piano, one of my favourite bits in get back out of many favourite bits is when Michael Lindsay Hogg and Ringo are the endlessly discussing where to do this special and what it's gonna be, and Paul's just vamping and improvising. And Ringo turns around and looks at him with such affection and says, Could we not just have him playing the piano for an hour? I'd watch that, it's so touching and so lovely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05All who's ever been written is all there, you know.
SPEAKER_06Probably a good time to to talk about your book. Um, it which is has been in Harback, but it's coming out in paperback very soon.
SPEAKER_01It's coming out soon in paperback with a little help from their friends. It was originally originally I thought we might call me with the Beatles, which I thought is an equally nice title, but I think with a little help from their friends is good. It came from Watching Get Back. Two things came out watching Get Back. I think like everybody, you know, it managed to do that unthinkable thing of make you fall in love with the Beatles again, even more, even to us who love them, you know. And um and I thought two things, I thought when I saw Kevin Harrington and Mal a lot, and you know, Sharon Dadas, the Harry Krishna guy, I thought there's so many interesting people in the Beatles story. There are so many. It's like Shakespeare, the dramatist personae. Yes, there are the big guys, yes, there's the the four of them, and and George, Barton, and you know, so there's the there's the Othello's and the King Lears, but there's also the Rosencrantz and Gildensterns and all these interesting other people. And I wanted to say, not that the Beatles, uh not that they could, you know, the Beatles have four incredible talents, but along the way, they were lucky enough to have their way shaped by equally, I mean, particularly George Martin, you know, undisputable that George Martin was a lot to do with the Beatles success. And every they'd all agree, but Paul would certainly agree with that. So I thought there's a story here, and it plays to my if it it speaks to my interest in the Beatles not just as musical but as a cultural and social and historical phenomenon. So it gives me so I thought if I wrote about a hundred other people in the Beatles story, it gives me a chance to talk about the Beatles and race. So we can talk about the Maharishi and Tarikali, Ravi Shankar, we can talk about the Beatles in class, uh we can talk we can talk about Jane Asher and how the Ashers were Paul McCartney's university, Mal Evans Horst Fascia, and how these grown men would fall in love with them at first meeting. It seems extraordinary, you know. Horse fascia, a bouncer in Hamburg who just served time for manslaughter, a tough guy, meets the Beatles, falls in love like a teenage girl. Now it's not because you're disparaging teenage girls, but you know, falls headlong in love with them. Um so I thought this is a great story, and also I just I thought I want to be part of the Beatles, I want to be part of the Beatles shelf. You know what I mean? I just thought I want to, I've written a lot of books about a lot of things, or a few books about a few things, but I thought I want to add my bit to the Beatles thing. So I said to my publisher, uh, music books don't fly really as a rule of rule of thumb. And they took a little persuading and what another Beatles book. And I was going, yeah, well, mine's gonna be different, and anyway, you can't stop me. And if you don't let me do it someone else, I'll do it. Because I just want in a hundred years' time to be someone to, as McConey says in blah blah blah, I just wanted to be part of the historiography of the Beatles.
SPEAKER_06It's a lovely book, so compelling, and I and I for me it's interesting seeing the story from the perspectives because you get little glimpses into other aspects that if you just told the Beatles story, you don't get it, if you know what I mean.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and the world didn't need another just Beatles book, I don't think. And that's not to say, I mean, we're all eagerly awaiting Mark's next two volumes, but I mean the world doesn't really need another Beatles biography, so it becomes incumbent upon you to think of a new thing. And I thought this is a new thing now. I I say no one's ever done it before. Harry has a thing called Beatles, Encyclopedia of Beetle People, but that's very different. That's little two-sentence review of everyone who ever bought them for a gig, ever. I didn't want to do that. I want to talk about people who I think had some in some way, some who touched them in a very minor way, whether it's you know Agnello and David who designed their shoes, you know, to Leslie Cabin issue cut their hair. All of these people in some way have some slight shaping influence on the Beatles narrative. Even to the extent I mean Imel de Marcos is in there because when people are astonished by that, I say, well, you know, all the stuff that happened to the Beatles in the Philippines, which listens to this podcast will be well aware of, so I won't rehash it. But the horrible stuff that happened to the Beatles in the Philippines because of Imelde Marcos, they go home and say, We're not doing that again. We're never doing that again. And they they bunker down in the studio and they and they become the studio Beatles. So no Emil de Marcos, no Sergeant Pepper.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01It's as simple as that, yeah. You know.
SPEAKER_06I love some of the little things that come out of your book as well, like um John Lennon's names for everyone. He seems to have lovely nicknames for a lot of people that are just priceless, aren't they? Like Norman he calls normal.
SPEAKER_01That's right, normal. And he calls um what does he call Brian Matthew? Brian Bathtub. He calls Brian Matthew the DJ. Yeah. He seems to be that cheeky kind of. Yeah. What I wanted to do as well is I didn't want, I know that the Beatles story is well known, particularly to Beatle maniacs. But I just thought I'd like on every page or in every entry there to be one thing that you either didn't know or think, oh, I never thought about it that way before. Yeah, I never thought that, you know, Ivor Arbiter, Ivor Arbiter, the man who designed the Beatles drop T logo, also is the man who introduces karaoke to Great Britain. I just wanted to be something that you go, wow, that's interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, and the lives of uh is Ivan Vaughan, I I didn't realise to what extent he went on to do different things.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and Alan Durbin, that you know, there are a lot of people, particularly in Maca's life, I think, because I think John John often re rebelled against authority and people who told him what to do, and people who tried to teach him things. I think he had a slightly I you don't need you know, I don't need you can't teach me anything. Paul's not like that. Paul's an intellectual sponge, and from Jane Asher to Alan Durbin, his teacher, he listened, he took things on board. You know, he's not he's very generous in his mind like that, you know.
SPEAKER_06What's confusing about John is that he does fall for people like Magic Alex, though, you know.
SPEAKER_01He does listen to people, it's just all the wrong people. Alan Klein, Magic Alex, you know, he just falls for all the wrong people, yeah. Amateur psychologists can say that's endlessly looking for a father, isn't it? You know, or a mother, or both, you know, and then getting disappointed and ditching them. And I love the bit when he's on Dick Cavert's show or something like that, where he says, um, where he ventured says, Yeah, we thought Alan Klein was great, but uh ungrudgingly he goes, Yeah, it turns out Paul was right.
SPEAKER_06He finally says it. Brilliant. Well, listen, so how can people find out more about that book and about what you're up to?
SPEAKER_01Um, yeah, the the book with a little help from their friends, Harper North, uh out in paperback, depending when that you're listening to this. It should be out either now-ish or very soon, so of course, make haste to pre-order it if you don't already have it. Um radio stuff. I do weekend breakfast Sunday mornings with Mark Radcliffe. I do a show called Freak Zone on Sunday nights, which is more experimental on leftfield music. That's the one I tried to get Matka to give me Carnival of Light for. And he said no politely. Social media, are you are you active? You know what? I'm gonna try and get more so. I used to be on Twitter, but of course that's become such a toxic place now. So I've very much withdrawn from Twitter, and I am trying to be more of a presence on Instagram. I'm Stu McConey on Instagram, but it's so and I don't want to sound like an old high court judge now, uh, you know, but uh it's like it's not as intuitive as Twitter, is it? I I need someone to tell me what's a real, what's a story, what do you do, how do you do that? At least Twitter, you just could put a thought on there, you know, and then of course be slagged off by people from all over the world. But no, I I I am on Instagram, you can find me on Instagram, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Brilliant. Well, listen, it's been amazing talking to you today, Stuart, about the Beatles and specifically Martha, my dear. Thanks so much. It's been great.
SPEAKER_01Oh, this has been a joy. Thank you, Tim. Thanks so much.
unknownOne, two, three, four.
SPEAKER_06Thanks for listening to my favourite Beatles song. If you like the podcast, please consider giving it a rating or review on your favourite podcast platform. This helps me to reach new listeners. You can follow the podcast on X.com, Instagram, and Facebook. Look for the links in the show notes. Thanks to Joe Kane for the fantastic music and Mark Cunningham for the logo design. I'll see you next time.