Celebrating the Life of John Lennon – 8th December 2021

As we commemorate the life of John Lennon on the anniversary of his murder in New York on 8th December, 1980, I had the pleasure and privilege to help celebrate his life on BBC Radio Merseyside with Tony Snell. You can listen to it here:

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Last year was the the the uh fortieth anniversary and because of uh everything that was going on and the covet situation that we were in, restrictions we were in, we had all kinds of things planned and outside broadcasts, but we just we just couldn't. So so there it is. But w we are where we are now. Let's talk to David Bedford, who's a published Beatles author. His books include The Beatles Fab Four Cities and the Brilliant Liddypool. I don't know whether you've seen that. It's a work of art. Dave's with us now. Hi Dave, good to talk to you.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Hey, good to talk to you again. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Yeah, good, thanks. Hope you are too. Uh it it rattles around, doesn't it? The 8th of December, a day that resonates with with you. I think we're roughly the same age, 15, when John Lennon was uh was shot. And because of the time difference, I I heard it on the radio that that morning. I think I was listening to Norman Thomas, who was a breakfast show presenter at the time, and and they were playing all the Beatle music and all the John Lennon songs, and uh and of course we then knew what had happened.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Well, do you know what exactly the same thing? I had uh alarm clock radio to get me up for school, and normally it would uh click in with the Radio Mercy side jingle, you get the news headlines, and then into Norman Thomas. And I remember that morning, I remember the the click of the clock radio, there was no jingle, and all I heard was John Lennon is dead, and that's what I woke up to. And listening just that that um bit of uh broadcast you had just before, uh how it was recorded, that brought it all back amazingly. So, and you say, one of those strange things, you know, 15. I sort of remember thinking, at least he was 40.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Exactly that, exactly that. I thought exactly the same thing. He went, oh, that's terrible that, but he what he was 40, that's quite old, isn't it, really? So not a bad innings was the kind of thing, but it's the kind of thing a f a 15-year-old would say, Dave, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Well, exactly. And I remember hitting 40 with my three young children and realising 40 is no age at all.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

And it really sort of it it hit you, but yeah, at 15, you've got no concept of the expanse of life.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

And the outpouring in in the city as well. I'll admit to you, I wasn't really into the Beatles at 15. But from that day, I got into it. And you know, the way you go through your teenage years, you you you have a music obsession, you become obsessed. And I became obsessed with with the whole Beatle thing, you know, from Please Please me right the way through to Let It Be and wanted to know all about McCartney and Lennon and Harrison and Starr and what they did and where they were from, almost, you know, to the point it was that was all I listened to for probably about four or five years afterwards.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Well, I'd already got into them. Um I mean, growing up in the Dingle and going to St. Silas where Ringo went, you sort of had a bit of that history knocking around anyway. Yeah. Um and when I started playing guitar a couple of years um earlier than this, the first book I got was The Beatles Complete. Um, which I've still got. I mean, the words were wrong, the chords were wrong, I scribbled all over it. But so I was learning the Beatles songs that way, so I was really getting into the music. Um just a couple of years um before I went to 12, 13, something like that.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Right.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

Wasn't the only music I listened to, yeah, but it was the music I got into first, and then obviously the the Beatles thing is around me all my life, you know, the last 30 odd years lived by Penny Lane. No, my three daughters were born at Oxford Street, where John was born, and they all went to Dovedale Primary School where John and George both went, and I'm still uh chair of governors there.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Yeah, and you're chair of governors there now. This was clearly all meant to be. The planets have lined up. I don't know whether you had a conversation with with my colleague uh Minty and uh and and Diane from the Beatles Story down there. And Minty asked a really important question, you know, what have we had enough of this now? Because, you know, we know the stuff, we know the Beatles story. To which I thought, well, I'll mention this to Dave. We thought we knew the Beatles story. We thought we knew until we saw this new Peter Jackson thing, Let It Be. That opened up a whole new raft of questions about these four young lads. If you look at the Let It Be film that that was released, it's a bit dark and it's a bit miserable, it's a bit dour, and it shows the four of them not getting on and all of this. But when you see the real footage, these were four la I mean, George was only about 25, I think. The others in the late 20s having a fantastic time.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Well, do you know what I went back and I watched the original Michael Lindsay Hogg Let It Be film um two or three weeks ago, and you know what? It's not as dark and as dark and as sad as I had sort of remembered it, and maybe we've misremembered the original one. Because I watched my thought, yeah, they've still got that thing with uh George and Paul, you know, where George eventually walks out. Yeah, but you can you got little glimpses of them having fun, but Peter Jackson's get back. I mean, honestly, it is magnificent, and I've got a real new appreciation for the songwriting. You know, we have this idea of Lennon McCartney, the greatest songwriters ever. Paul would three-quarters write a song, John would help finish it off, and vice versa. But now what what you you see is for example, we get back, Paul just thumping on his bass, and this melody coming out of it, and you follow the whole trajectory of that song start to finish, and you realise that, particularly with John and Paul, they were bouncing back ideas, yeah, messing around with lyrics and structure, and then you know George and the Ringo, and all of them involved, and you suddenly get completely new appreciation for how they wrote their songs.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Exact exactly that, yeah, exactly that. Yeah, and you know what made me laugh as well. They had big Mal Evans, who was the roadie there. He was kind of he was writing everything down. Write this down, Mal. Yeah, I'll write this down. Jojo was a man, write that down. So it kind of like it it made it real, it made it ordinary, if you like, you know, because there was the myth of oh writing songs and you've got to be in a room and you've got to sit next to each other and face each other with a pen and a piece of pencil, uh piece of paper, and it was like a case, Mal, I've got an idea, write this down, and he would just write it down on sheet of A4. Brilliant!

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Yeah, and the amount of sheets of paper that would have been thrown away. Yeah, um, thankfully a lot of them have been kept, and with um Paul McCartney's lady's books on the lyrics, there's lots of the originals that are in there.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Exactly that, exactly that.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

And I got I got a new appreciation also for John as a guitar player. Because we often talk about you know, Paul being a genius musician, can play a bit of everything, you know, takes the bass playing to a whole new level. George, this great lead guitarist, Ringo, one of the greatest drummers ever. I mean, everybody concentrate on John as a rhythm guitarist, and you then just study and you watch what he's doing like that with Digga Pony. That that riff that he plays over and over again, regular, perfect. And I got a new appreciation for John's musical skill. I think it's refreshing.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

There's a lot of people who who would say the same. Listen, they we're almost out of time, but I just wanted to touch on Happy Christmas War is over. John John and John and Yoko. Um, it was it was a message of peace, wasn't it? They hired billboards in in New York, I don't know whether they did it all around the world, and it just said Happy Christmas War is over. But they left it late. 50 years ago this song came out. They left it late. There was no social media then, you just couldn't, you know, it just dropped and it played. You had to promote it, you had to get it to the radio stations, the radio stations had to agree to play it. And it it was it bombed. It just bombed in that first Christmas.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Yeah, I think saying it's bombed is quite ironic with uh with war is over.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Yes, yeah, of course, yeah. There you are.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

But yeah, yeah, we took out you know big billboards uh in some of the capital cities, put it in newspapers, but I think the important bit with the phrase is what's in brackets, which is if you want it. You know, war is over if you want it. And John became this champion for peace. Um and Yoko has has kept that going. Um and with being involved with Dovedale School, you know, I've I've met her through Dovedale, she's been very, very generous to the school. She does a lot for Liverpool, which people don't often realise. And she's done a lot in in John's memory. And I think that song, the fact it gets played every Christmas, and with having the children's choir on there as well. Yeah, you know, that that cry for peace is still needed all these years later. Because it's the same message needs going out there. If we want it, war can be over. And that's the message, and you know what a legacy John has left for us.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Well, we're gonna talk to one of the recipients of those special acetates that have been uh uh that have been given out as well in a second. Dave, great to talk to you. I'll finish on the same point that I started to talk to you on, which was about age. The kids who were singing on Happy Christmas, War is Over, are now in their late late 50s, early 60s. Now that's scary.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Well that no, but that makes us young though, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Well, maybe not me, mate. Dave, great to talk to you. Thanks very much. Don't leave us along next time, mate. All about it, mate. Thank you. Cheers, bye bye. He's a good lad, Dave. Check out some of his uh his books as well. That Liddypool one is uh is genius as well.