My Favourite Beatles Song
My Favourite Beatles Song
Wild Honey Pie – Boff Whalley
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Boff Whalley is an artist, writer and musician, and a founder member of Chumbawamba. Here he discusses Wild Honey Pie, from The Beatles (the White Album), and explains why he thinks it's punk and indie rolled into one. He also digs into its unsettling seventh chords and tritones, and the tape flutter that had to be done by hand on the mix.
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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 artist, writer, musician Bob Wally. Welcome, Bob. Good to be here. This is a funny turn up for the books, isn't it? It is. The way it happened is odd in itself. Is that the whole story? And what happened was on a previous episode, Chris Shaw of Eggpop Fame, my guest, had said something slightly undermining Chumba Wumba, hadn't he? And then uh you heard it and got in touch uh with Chris about it. Um, how did that conversation with Chris go? He was absolutely charming. He was really, really lovely.
SPEAKER_01As I as I knew he would be.
SPEAKER_00So I said to him, Oh, well, ask him if he wants to be on the show because uh have you.
SPEAKER_01It's because I mean I when you I mean, because we uh we had a kind of history, especially in the UK, of as a band of uh being criticized and everything, which is fine. But and so I just it doesn't mean anything, but because it was Chris, and because I've been listening so avidly to you know all the egg pod stuff, I was like, oh no, this is an outrage. And I just I just all I wanted to ask was I said, you know, I look a total fan of yours, Chris, but I've got to ask, have you heard more than one song that we ever did? And he said, I have to uh hold my hands up. I have I actually do only know one song, which is often the reply. So I think, well, that's okay then. That song is really an is really annoying for a lot of people. Tubthumping is really annoying, and and you know, I can see why.
SPEAKER_00It's also very in um uh heartlifting for a lot of people, isn't it? I mean it is, oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, for for a lot of people, it's it's brilliant, it's full of hope and joy and all that sort of thing. But um but I think the other thing is that because we were we were always so um kind of in your face political, and that really put a lot of people off.
SPEAKER_00So again, I just I understand that's fine. We'll get to talk about some of your other things, especially your book, but to start with, I'd love to hear your Beatles credentials. Do you have an earliest memory of the Beatles? Um Yeah, I do.
SPEAKER_01I I so I was born at the beginning of the 60s, but um and I could probably had a vague idea of you know the the pop hits and penny lane and stuff, really vaguely. But then my mum got remarried in 1970 when I was nine. And my new dad, the new improved better version of dads, came along and he had about he had a handful of pop records, pop LPs, which we'd never had in our house before. And one of them was rubber soul. And it was the old um, it was those classic kind of 19 early, late 60s, early 70s pressings where they thought, oh, we better do a stereo pressing. So all the vocals were on one side and all the instruments are on the other. And um obviously after a while I realized that was just wrong, that wasn't right at all. But but I because I grew up with those albums that where they did do that with stereo, they they were just they were just a marvel to me because I could pan the stereogram to one side and just listen to the harmonies, and you know, listening to Armazone, things like Nowhere Man and stuff like that, and and and literally just lay on the floor with my head near the speaker, just listening to the to that album over and over and over again, and gradually working out who's singing what and which parts they sing in. And it just gave me an absolute love of a cappella singing and harmonies and pop and everything.
SPEAKER_00You can hear you can hear the instruments um divided. I mean, nowadays on YouTube you can get isolated tracks versions of all the songs, so you can hear them all broken down. But in the old way, like you say, you could pan it left and just hear the drums and then a vocal or something, couldn't you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, which was like a revelation, but it was great, yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's very strange, those mixes, yeah. Um, they're sort of making up for those now, aren't they? With with remixes in proper stereo, but they are, yeah, yeah. Yeah, for a long time, the Beatles aficionado would prefer the mono.
SPEAKER_01It's it's so weird that that George Martin and the Beatles themselves allowed that to happen. I'm glad they did because it was great for me. But um, but it's such an awkward way of listening to what is essentially a band making a you know a noise to like split them apart and go, You're you stand over on that side if you stand over on that side.
SPEAKER_00It's weird. I uh the the explanation seems to be that they thought it was a you know stereo was just a sort of novelty that wasn't going to catch on, or something, wasn't it? They were just afterthoughts, really, which is yeah, you know, again, lack of foresight there from the producers. But um, but I noticed I was reading your book. Um, you say at one point that you sort of self-educated yourself with the Beatles and other artists.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, when I when when kind of punk rock gave me the the wherewithal and the the the the confidence to pick up an instrument with a bunch of mates and say, right, we're gonna be a band, we're getting on stage, you know, in in a month, even though we've never done this kind of thing before. So that was brilliant. But I had behind me um a love of harmony and melody that I'd just basically learnt off off the Beatles. And um so as soon as I picked up a a guitar, I wanted to sing melodies. You know, I didn't want to shout, I didn't want to be like Joe Strummer and Johnny Rotten. I wanted to I loved the ideas that they were coming up with, but I wanted that to to have some kind of um just to have just to have melody. I've I've always been a sucker for melody and and whatever stage the Beatles are at, you know, all the different kind of parts that they played, there's just always melody and it's brilliant. Do you have a favourite period, the Beatles? Well, I knew you were going to ask this, and obviously it's really complicated, and I've probably everybody says, Oh, I like them all. Um, I like the I like I listen most to the late Beatles, the hairy scary Beatles, uh, because the music's really complex and interesting, and I can you can just listen to it forever. But it's the mid-period Beatles where I feel like I can hear them trying everything out and experimenting, and I just think that's glorious to hear. To hear them kind of stretching out in the studio and all that sort of thing. But just to make it complicated, when just be just before 1976, me and my friend Sage, we we got into the Beatles uh Hamburg period, all the star club tapes, and um and I've you know I've got about five versions of those albums, they're with all different tracks or track orders and everything. But they were again, they were an absolute revelation. The the breadth of music and the roughness and the runess, and it's all live, and it's all it's I just we just thought it was wonderful, and it taught us about you know rhythm American rhythm and blues, about rock and roll, uh about the old you know, music hall numbers. So I I love that. I love those records, and I've heard that that uh they are being cleaned up as we as we speak, so I'm I'm looking forward to that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's funny if John Lennon, there's a quote from him, isn't there, saying that was our best stuff, you know, um when we were in Hamburg, which you sort of get, you can totally get where he's coming from there, can't you? Because there was probably a lot of energy and a lot of rawness, but also they got accomplished that way, didn't they? They learned their trade that way.
SPEAKER_01I think that's where they learned that they weren't the same as everybody else. They weren't the same as Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, because because Paul McCartney would go, Yeah, I've got this song, you know, called When I'm 64, and they wouldn't just go, Oh no, we're rockers, get rid of it. They were, you know, writing already writing songs which didn't fit the genre, and I think that's that's brilliant. Have you ever met the Beatles or their entourage or seen any of them live? I've I've never met them. Um I saw Paul McCartney once at Glastonbury quite a long time ago. Possibly the first time he played it. And um I wasn't bowled over, I just thought, yeah, this is great, and then that's Paul. Oh, look, that's Paul McCartney, and he's doing the songs that I know. But um it didn't add anything to my you know ridiculous love of the Beatles at all. And and I think I always especially post-punk and post-being in a band, because you meet all these people who are meant to be big and famous. And you know, there's a fair few of them turn out to be not very pleasant people anyway. And uh and also you learn that we're all the same, which is fine. Don't don't go asking for people's autographs because Yeah, it's just weird that whole thing of putting people on a pedestal. I don't get that. I'd rather I'd rather kind of listen to what listen to a Paul McCartney album and just be absolutely bowled over by the by by what he's doing and what he's writing as an artist, rather than sit down and go, Oh, can you tell me the same old Beatles stories again that you've told eight million times?
SPEAKER_00I saw a really interesting um thing with him recently where he said, if people come up to me now and ask me to do like a selfie or something, I'll say, No, I don't do that. But he says, I'll I'll have a chat with you. And he'll chat you'll chat with people. And uh his his wife pointed out that that takes up more of your time than if you've just given them a selfie.
SPEAKER_01I love that. That's great. I was just talking to there's a uh a writer called Tony Fletcher, who was just just staying here the other day, and we were talking about the fact that he was when he was 16, he had a fanzine, and uh he was really into the who and the jam and all this sort of stuff. But Paul McCartney, he met Paul McCartney in a studio when he was with the jam, and he just said to Paul, oh, can I well can I interview you for me, fanzine? And he was 16, and Paul McCartney said, Yeah, okay. So two days later they sat down and talked for nearly two hours. And during the during the interview, Tony said, he said, you know, I didn't really know much about McCartney. I knew all about the Beatles. But he said, and he said he told Paul, I have to be honest, Paul, um, I'm not a great fan of your solo work. And I was like, no, you can't do that. He said, but I you know, I hadn't heard of it, I hadn't heard Ram and you know albums like that. But he said that Paul was just absolutely beautiful, even though he said that, Paul was like, Yeah, that's fine. The one thing where he got a little bit bristly was that the only book about the Beatles that Tony had was Philip Norman's Shout, which, as you may know, Paul and Linda referred to as Shout. And uh so he brought that book along and said, Paul, will you sign this book? And Paul said, Mm, I'd rather not, thanks.
SPEAKER_00The song you've chosen is Wild Honey Pie. So it was written by Paul McCartney, credited to Lennon McCartney. It was written according to most accounts in March and August, between March and August of 1968, probably started at Rishikesh, recorded for The Beatles, which is most commonly known as the White album, um, and released, which was released in November 1968 in the UK and the US, a few days apart. And of course, that album was a huge success. Uh in the UK it was number one, in the US it was number one for many weeks. But uh yeah, tell us what led you to choose this song.
SPEAKER_01Well, when you've kind of said, or you know, do you do you fancy talking about a Beatles song? And I looked through the list, but then while I was looking through the list of what's left kind of thing, which is still quite an extensive list, I I said to my daughter who's 2024 now, I said, um she's got into the Beatles, she loves listening to the Beatles. I said, What's what you know the White album? What's what's your worst uh track on the the White album? She said, Oh, there's one that I really can't stand. And I said, Okay, obviously it's revolution number nine. She said, No, no. I said, Oh, is it why don't we do it in the road? She said, No, no. She won't she said, Wild honey pie. She just said, Why? Why did they do it? I hate it, it sounds awful. And so I thought, well, I should write, I should, I should talk about that because I kind of think that everything that the Beatles did, not always forever, but at least on the White Album, is all brilliant in context. It's all part of this amazing thing that they were doing. And I think Wild Honey Pie, I actually love it musically anyway, but um because I think it really it's kind of really challenging in terms of uh the kind of musicality of it. But also um I think that you know, I have everyone typifies McCartney as being, you know, Blackbird and and you know, I will and whatever, you know. While he was doing that, he was also going, Hey, I've got an idea, I'll go in the I'll go in the the kind of drum cupboard and bang this out while John's in another room doing something else. And um, and not only that, but thought, yeah, that's good. That's 50 odd seconds, that'll do, let's put out on the album. It's not like, oh, we were just having a jam, let's leave it. And also because I think that Wild Honey Pie was the precursor to this idea that you can have half an idea and then use it, link it to other songs, make it part of a bigger context, make it part of uh a whole um, you know, and you know, like obviously the second side of Abbey Road, but um even before that, there's it's it's this the start of this idea that you don't everything doesn't have to be a three and a half minute pop song or song. You can have a snippet and think, you know, that that sits well in between this and that, and it it kind of throws the listener off off they just listen to obla de obla da. Let's let's put this on because that that makes them think, whoa, hang on, this is not this is not uh predictable, and we don't you know we don't know what's coming next, which was always the Beatles' watchword. I love that.
SPEAKER_00The the White album it is full of snippets and combined elements and really abrupt changes in gear, isn't it? Yeah I mean they really were getting into that kind of collage, I suppose you might call it, of sound, weren't they?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I think I think because I listened, I listened to a lot of uh early Frank Zappa and they they were kind of doing that before the Beatles. Uh a lot, in fact, quite a few people were doing it, but in uh in a very kind of avant-garde way. And the Beatles as being like the biggest hot group in the world. How brave it is to go, yeah, we're we're we're not gonna kind of treat this as some kind of you know um art underground thing. We're gonna we're gonna sell millions and millions of this thing, but we're still gonna mess around and play around and challenge ourselves and challenge our audience, and um and I I that's the thing that you know, with with our band, that was the thing that we looked at. We were like, every year you look at the Beatles, they were like a different band. And then every album you look at the Beatles and you think, well, that's like five different bands on that album, you know. And I like I was talking about when my dad came along with his albums, one of them was he had the Rolling Stones aftermath album. And it kind of struck me afterwards that there's maybe about three stone songs that you could pull out and say, There you go, that's the Rolling Stones, and you then you know what the Rolling Stones sound like. And that's the same with most bands, and artists and creative people. You you find a style that works and you kind of stick to it if people are buying it, and the Beatles were like, Nope, we don't want to do that, we want to completely, you know, turn that idea on its head. If the people are expecting this, we're gonna do something completely different, and that's that's what I always loved about the Beatles, and that's obviously what Wild Honey Pie does.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because it goes from O Bla de, O Bla Da, which is possibly the most jaunty, polished, poppy tune by the same composer, Paul McCartney, and immediately follows with this. It's the most, I suppose, challenging in in that sense.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it because it's the famous thing, is that when when people say, Oh, I don't like the Beatles, that you can say, I mean it's Stuart McCorney said it a few times. You say, Um, which Beatles don't you like? If you don't like all of it, then you're kind of saying I don't like music, because they they just covered everything, and that's that's that's why they were interesting, and musically astute enough to do it as well, you know, with George Martin. They they realized they could do anything.
SPEAKER_00And Paul particularly realized that here. This is the first Beatles track where he played every note of every instrument on his own from the start to the finish. Because I mean, he he'd done yesterday, but then there was a string quartet on yesterday. Um, so this is his first, and actually, we as we know 18 months later he was doing his whole first solo album that way, wasn't he? Where he did pretty much all of it. Yeah, yeah. A one-man band. Have you have you ever done anything like that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I d I I kind of do lots of things like that, but but I but I'm a huge believer in in whatever I've done, whether it's you know the band or with theatre or what whatever. I'm I love collaboration because I think that um and I think that what whatever McCartney was doing on his own, he would then bring it back into the context of the Beatles at the time, and they would somebody would have a discussion about where it should sit on the album and why and what how it would work. And also you know that that the relationship between Lennon and McCartney was such that if one of them did something that wasn't very good, that they would they would get told. Which is kind of why when they both went solo, they were only gonna last five or six years before they ended up surrounded by people that just said everything you do is great, and so there's no kind of there's no one there to go. Actually, Paul, that one's not sure about Mullocking Tire, maybe you know what I mean, uh which is being unfair, obviously, but um but um but again at the time you know Abbey Road, they were I mean in the White Album sessions, they throw in all these ideas around, and no one, nobody's going, ah, actually, John, you know, revolution number nine. Nah, not not sure about that. They're all embracing it and putting it out under the name Beatles, and to me that's that's collaboration, it's brilliant.
SPEAKER_00Some people call it a filler or a transition song, but it was it's arguably a composed composition. I mean, it it does have a form, it goes all the chords are seventh chords, dominant seventh chords, which is immediately unsettling because it has a lot of. I I noticed that you have a song on that folk album you did, um, called The Devil's Tritone or something. Yeah, it's it's full of the devil's tritone because it goes from G, F, E, E, Flat, D, all seventh. So it's got that, it's immediately unsettling, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02It's really unnerving, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And it's funny because they uh just thinking about that, the um I saw the Pixies recently this summer, and um apart from the fact that their their their intro music is um what is it? It's um oh you know my name, look up the number. They use that as their intro music. So you could see half the audience, this huge audience, thousands of people are all thinking, what on earth is this? But it's great that they come onto that. So they're obviously big Beatles fans, but they do a they do a cover of of Wild Honey Pie. And what they do is they take out the the devil's interval, they take it out instead of going down, they go da da da da, like uh you know, like a John Lennon's whatever, you know, like I'm the walrus, and like, and it just smooths it out and makes it nicer. And I think no, put that put that awkward stuff in there, and and that again, that's really brave of McCartney, who's writing at the same time as he's writing, you know, I will. He's going, I'm not gonna go for the nice smooth thing, I'm gonna go for the unsettling kind of interval there.
SPEAKER_00And then, of course, he attacks the strings with a sort of strange vibrato that puts it slightly out of tune, doesn't he? Yeah. So that's another element that's discomforting when you're listening to it.
SPEAKER_01Apparently, there's no you there's no effects on that. He said he said he did it all just by waggling his finger up and down.
SPEAKER_00Well, there's two things. There's the waggling of the finger, and then there's the kind of warbly fluttering effect that you get, is actually from the mix. Where and I've got I'll go. Do you mind if I just look this up because it's uh a really interesting point and I made a note of it? Here it is. So the fluttering sound on one of the acoustic guitars was created by making the speed of the tape fluctuate slightly, and this was done by brushing a hand over the metal spool while it rotated at 15 inches per second, which resulted in a sound similar to playing a cassette tape when the machine's batteries are almost flat. Yeah. And what's interesting about that is they had to do it during the mix. So when they did the the monoversion and the stereo version are different because they had to do it again. And even in 2018, so right after today, when Giles Martin was doing they had to do it. Again, there there was no way of doing it digitally, so they had to literally go back to the rotating metal spool and and wobble it, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's really lovely. I wonder if that was so is would that have been written on the on the kind of recording tape box?
SPEAKER_00I mean, how would they know that's what you had to do? That's a good question. I wonder, yeah. Because I I guess maybe it had maybe it was. Maybe that's how they explained it somewhere. Um but it was yeah, brushing a hand over a rotating metal spool, which in the notes to the uh the box set of the white album, Charles uh Martin says was rather hazardous. I don't know who it was hazardous to health to your the health of the person doing it or to the machine, I'm not sure.
SPEAKER_01But um what I love about that as well is that it's um it's about the kind of physicality of it and that that thing of you know 24-track tape or two-inch tape or whatever it is, and um and the fact that it you can still get it out of a box and put it on, it still plays. It's not like having zip drives and jazz drives and a dats, and which are all like, you know, where's the where's the lead for it? Where do I plug it in? You know, it's still playable and it's a physical, big, heavy thing that's got all this music on it, and it and I love that because we're kind of getting away from the all the physicality of it, you know, and you know, it's even like holding an LP instead of Big D or listening to an MP3 or something, and and I love that. I think that the fact that you make a mix by waving your hands across the uh yeah, lovely.
SPEAKER_00The the entire effect is clearly unsettling with the tritones, the bends, and then that fluttering um and the repetition as well. It's sort of maddening, isn't it? Um it is, yeah. I mean, David Quantick called it every element of it is irritating.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely challenging. I think the irritation is is is kind of look, sit up and listen to this. You know, it's gonna and I to be honest, I think a lot of um experimental music, especially in the kind of sixties and seventies, was like that. People were playing with sound and trying to understand that everything didn't have to be nice, kind of, you know, you know, three-note chords and everything had to just follow. Oh, yeah, here's the verse chorus, verse chorus, middle egg. You know, it's like what can we do to play with this? I've you know, the classical composers that were, you know, all the fluxus people just really messing around with sound and what music is, including McCartney and then you know, and tomorrow never knows, and and then Lennon taking that idea and doing Revolution 9. Everyone was playing with sound and seeing what what the possibilities were. So I to me, I don't find that irritating. I find that um and and it's challenging, obviously, but I find that inspiring. I think yes, let's keep playing and let's keep trying to find different ways of doing this thing called music.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because you meant you in your talking about your book, I think it's in the beginning. You say that you collect stories that refuse the beginning, middle end shape. And I love this quote: stories that stutter and mumble, that cough and splatter, where things stop mid-course or never start. Yeah. And I think that's this is an example of that, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01And all all anyone that loves the Beatles, you know, any anyone that's kind of uh gets obsessed by the Beatles, you suddenly find yourself getting to the point where you enjoy listening to the mistakes, and you've you go and find the mistakes, and the mistakes become. In fact, I saw this. We were we were uh my wife's family, they're they live over in the States, and we we went there and there was had there happened to be this band that were doing a six-day Beatles marathon playing every single Beatles song over six days, and we went to one of the nights, and it was so beautifully well done and orchestrated, you know, they had strings and brass and everything, really well done to the point where they did the mistakes. So the bits where the the hi-hat, you know, drops out on a song because you know they they were jumping the tape from one thing to another and the the hi-hat just got lost. They did that, and of course, I was sitting with people that I know, and I couldn't go, hey, look, did you hear that? They dropped the hi-hat out just at the time. But I in but I really I was thinking that's brilliant, that's lovely. That's what makes the song these these the the human humanness of it. Yeah, there's always a thing where where you think, oh, we've got into a nice groove now. This is you know, musically or whatever you you're working on creatively. This is great, I I can do this. And then you stop well, I love the idea of suddenly stopping myself and thinking, hang on, this needs an edge to it, it needs something else, it needs something to mess it up that that takes it somewhere else. Otherwise, it's just the same as everything else. And so if you can do and uh middle eights are always great for that, I've always found, is that if you've got a nice song and you think this is very this works, whether it's a rock song or a choral song or whatever, this this works. It needs a middle eight. Let's go somewhere else completely. Let's throw in let's throw in a you know a tuber that's that's you know played outside on a hilltop in the rain, just because it takes it somewhere else and and and then whoever's listening to it goes, Whoa, it's gone somewhere else, and ah, now it's back again. And that's a it it becomes the journey and it becomes a story and a narrative. And and I've again I think Beatles songs do that. All you know, happiness is a warm gun. You're following this story really closely because it's going through all different. It's like you're going in walking into different rooms with someone telling you this story, and and I've always loved that. Everything I've ever done has always had that element of come on, let's mess this up now. Usually with other people who I'm working with going, what? No, it's fine, and and then and then the arguments you have where you're going, no, honestly, it'll be it'll work, it'll be really good.
SPEAKER_00I think I think uh certainly John and Paul had that attitude from the beginning, didn't they? Because they there's if you track their career from the early hits, you can see the point where they go, We've done enough of this harmonica, and yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do something else, you know. And they they very quickly move on aboard of this, you know. Yeah, um, and that's brave, isn't it? As a for a popular artist, one aiming at commercial success. Bowie was the same, wasn't he?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, yeah. I grew up listening to David Bowie and thinking the beautiful thing about this is that he's changing. His every album is like completely different. It's and it's lovely that the voices are the same with the Beatles and Bowie and people like that, but but the uh the ideas really change, and that's that's great. And and same, you know, with McCartney. I think for me, my favorite albums after post kind of maybe post band on the run. My favorite albums are the um Fireman Rushers albums with youth. The the the kind of techno ambient stuff, it's just I it just makes me so happy that he will do that. It'll go and sit in a studio and and cut his own work up and and create new ideas. And I just think that's great. He's still this this kid in from 1960, you know, who's who's wanting to try out different things.
SPEAKER_00I heard you talking on another podcast about the the commoners choir and how you'd part of your mission there was to say to people, look, you don't have to know how to sing, just come along if you like the the sound of this. Yeah and it reminded me, and you and you were saying, like, don't worry, you know, about baritone or to you know, uh just you if you sing like low over there and high over there. And I was thinking of have you seen that clip of McCartney when he was doing his orchestral stuff and he was saying, I don't write music down, I can't read it, you know. And he was explaining to the orchestra, you know, yeah, I've never done this.
SPEAKER_01Yes, isn't that lovely? You know, the the uh imposter syndrome. I've always had imposter syndrome, probably just due to where I grew up and how I, you know, and all that sort of thing. But my big thing is don't give in to it. So I got I got I had a friend Sarah who's a brilliant writer, and she wrote, she she rang me up and she said, You know, you've done all sorts of music. Have you ever written for uh opera? And I said, No. And she said, Uh, do you think you could? And I said, Yeah. And she said, Okay, I'll, you know, because she was working with Welsh National Opera. And of course, I put the phone down and I went, I went to Casey, I said, I think I've just said yes to working with, you know, doing some opera. She was like, Why? You've never done it. And and I I can still remember that, you know, maybe like three or four months later, I'm walking into this huge rehearsal room in Cardiff, Welsh National Opera, with these incredible orchestral players and singers with the most amazing voices, and saying to myself, it's fine, it's fine. Just just tell them what you want to want it to be and tell them how you want it, how you want them to do it. And they'll kind of respect that. I had to convince myself of that. Really, it's really it's horrifying, really. And uh, and it but it's great, you can do it, and you do it, and then they they think, okay, this is not what we normally do. So, like, for instance, look, I want part of this to be this part where the the the music carries on, but we want bird song. So we so we bought these uh these little instruments from a specific um guy in France who makes them, and they all make little bird songs. So I want you to all stop singing, six singers, and play your bird songs, and then the bird song was was scored, we scored it. Um and they they really enjoyed it. They were obviously thinking, well, this is great, you know, we don't usually get to do this kind of thing. And you know, that isn't the famous tale with the Beatles that when when George Martin and McCartney were trying to teach them to do the thing of, you know, let for day in the life, let's start on this note and then go right up to this note, be as take it as long as you want that, and that half of them are going, Well, you know, we need it written down. They're going, okay, well, here you go. Now, here's a line from here to here. Just do it in your and I think like didn't one person, didn't one person the orchestra object and did wouldn't play on it? And you just think, come on, it's fun.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's the danger, isn't it? That if you don't indulge in this kind of play and experimentation, that you're missing the point of art entirely, aren't you? You're just yeah following dots.
SPEAKER_01In because in in the band over the years, because we worked with all sorts of different musicians, and what we find was that proper classical musicians really struggle without having a score, and they really struggle with just kind of make something up that fits in with this chord pattern. They really struggle. And on the other hand, on the the other end of the scale, there's folk musicians who are so used to just improvising that they come into a studio and you're saying, Yeah, just play along with this, and then you think, and you say, Ah, okay, this is set to a tempo, you're speeding up, and they can't not, they can't just like they were like, No, I've got to go with the flow, and you're like, Yeah, but all the other instruments are are playing in a 4-4 that's kind of got a beat to it, and they really struggle keeping in the beat. And it's like you said, so both ends of the scale, there's this kind of yeah, worry. And that's why that's why it's good. That's why it was good for me and and my mates to come through punk because the idea with that was we're not learning any kind of we didn't know any formal structures about putting music together or about what you're supposed to do with it or how you're supposed to approach it. It was like, let's, yeah, let's make this up and see what happens. When I got into punk and kind of started me my own thing of, oh, I want to be in a band, let's let's be in a band, then it would, it would be the kind of unruly elements of the Beatles, like wild honey pie and stuff like that, that I find inspiring because I thought, do you know what? We can do this thing where we can't really play our instruments very well, and you know, and and we don't really know what we're doing. I don't know where to actually don't know where to plug this into the amp, which holders this wire going. We had that naivety, but knowing that it can work because the Beatles did it, let's let's just go for it. And so Wild Honey Pie is basically it's a it's basically what punk. It's indie and punk all rolled into one, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I don't know if you're a fan of the Beach Boys, are you? Yeah, because um they released an album called Wild Honey uh just before the one album, so it was the end of 67 they recorded that and released it in 68. So there's some conjecture, no proof that um this might have influenced Paul to write Wild Honey Pie and then Honey Pie, which is the other Honey Pie song.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I think he probably did get the title as just uh in you know in the sense of messing around with words. Oh, yeah, Mike Love's got this, you know, wild honey thing. Wouldn't it be funny? I've got this song called Honey Pie, but why don't we do wild? But of course, the songs are nothing like each other, and and I love how Mike Love is he's a bit like um Donovan, you know, Mike Love and Donovan seem to kind of go through life um claiming that they've written half the Beatles back catalogue. You know, anything that happened in in India with the Marish was Mike Love or Donovan, like, yeah, yeah, I gave him that idea. I taught them that.
SPEAKER_00So I take it all with a pinch of salt. It's a strange coincidence at the very least, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and they're all writing little kind of sneaky references to each other and things like that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01But it's great, you know, that whole the whole I know it's kind of common knowledge now, but the whole thing of of Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney um kind of wanting to better each other as well as being really influenced by each other, I think he's great because they weren't trying to be better musicians, they weren't trying to say I can play guitar better than you or my harmonies are better than yours. They were going, how far can we push what we do musically? And one would do it, and then and then Brian Wilson hears it and thinks, right, I'm gonna push, push even further. And you know, even to the extent of you know, when they met up, he's like, Paul, I want you to, you know, I'm doing this track. Can you munch a carrot on the track for me, please? Yeah, I was on a Beach Boys album. What did you play? I I ate a carrot. Brilliant. I love it. I and I love all that it's because there is a sense of kind of play and joy and hopefulness in it all. It's lovely.
SPEAKER_00Are there any other Beatles songs you can choose off the list or on the list now in your top Beatles songs?
SPEAKER_01I love I love all the um the songs, like I said about Happiness is Warm Gum. I love the songs where they change midstream and go somewhere else. And I so obviously I think that the second side of Abbey Road is just a work of genius. I love that because I find that really inspiring that you can take, you know. I know Lennon had a kind of a bit of a downer on it, but the fact that he had stuff like Polythine Palm and Me Mr. Mustard lying around, but he didn't know what to do with them and they weren't finished, and yet between them all, they stitched it all together into this kind of symphonic, beautiful thing that absolutely makes sense with those short things all going into each other and then kind of reprising every so often. And and again, it's like like I said earlier, it's it's like they've got a narrative, they've got a story, and it takes you through it. And I I've I've always loved songs where you don't get everything within the first half a minute. You get something and then suddenly it goes somewhere else, and you you know, and you're in the middle of like washing up the pots or whatever, and you suddenly turn around and go, Whoa, is this the same song? And and that's great, yeah. So I do I love all those songs where and and again, you know, and going on to their solo careers. I think things like back seat of my car on ram, just and Uncle Albert, you know, these songs that are just things stitched together that you know, beautiful, really beautiful. I loved your book.
SPEAKER_00Is it do we just call it butt? Is that the word? Life isn't like that, is it? Yeah, but um yeah, available now. Um, how do people find out more about you and your work and what you're doing?
SPEAKER_01Um, I have a website which is boffwally.com, which is um which I try and keep up with, but I don't always manage it. Probably mainly because my my kind of um way of working is is if somebody comes along with an interesting idea or commission or project or whatever, then I kind of follow it and I go with it, and then I end up juggling five or six different things at once. As long as they're interesting, and I'm um I I kind of just jump in and then later on I think, what am I doing? I've got too many weird different things going on. But um like at the moment I'm in the middle of writing uh a book about about comedy and humor in protest. Everything from you know, from you know, Greek theatre to Dadais and up to the present day and everything, and Monty Python and just using humour as a kind of anti-establishment, anti-war, all that sort of thing. And it's just a joy to write, it's really exciting to do. Oh, when when will that be out? Probably next year.
SPEAKER_00Great.
SPEAKER_01I'll I'll I'll write about it. Are you doing any musical projects at the moment? I do. I'm doing a lot of stuff with uh Commoners Choir, where the the whole point of Commoners Choir at the moment is okay, we've been going for quite a bit now, so we need to how can we change and challenge ourselves? Let's try and come up with something that goes somewhere else. We're at that point, I think. Yeah, but it's but that's a lovely thing to do anyway. You know, especially in this kind of 24-7 digital technology screens age, just standing in a room with 70 people every Monday Monday evening is an absolute joy. Just everybody just trying to sing together. And we write our own songs and all that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00So and it came I as I understand it came from the combination of choral music and punk, right? Yeah, that's the combination that you went for, yeah.
SPEAKER_01It was like after Chumbawamba stopped, then I was wondering, you know, wandering around musically for a while, thinking, what can I do that people haven't done before? And that eventually is what was what I came up with, thinking, you know, we had in our house we had these Mormon Tabernacle Choir records, and then I was bringing home, you know, uh records by the clash and crass. I just thought, wouldn't it be great if you had the the energy and the anger of the clash, but the musicality of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. And that's that's where Commoners Choir came out of. Do you um does the choir perform publicly a lot? Yeah, yeah, we do quite a few things. We do we tend to do kind of events rather than just kind of turning up and singing somewhere, but yeah, we we do we do play. Obviously, it's if we go and play somewhere, then there's there's if there's often about 60 of us, so it's difficult hiring coaches and everything. You know, when when I first started a choir, the idea was great, I'll never have to help somebody carry drums into a venue ever again. But instead, it's like, oh, right, we've got to get 60 people to Lancaster next Saturday. How are we gonna do that?
SPEAKER_00Thanks so much for spending time with me today to talk about the Beatles and specifically wild honey pie. It's been great. Great. No, I've really enjoyed I've really enjoyed talking. Thanks very much. I appreciate that.
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SPEAKER_00Thanks 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.