The Music Of Lennon and McCartney

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From Wikipedia:

The Music of Lennon & McCartney is a 1965 British television special honouring the songwriting partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney of the English rock band the Beatles. It was produced by Granada Television and aired on that station on 16 December 1965 before receiving a national broadcast across the entire ITV network, of which Granada was a part, the following evening. The programme mainly consisted of other artists miming to their recordings of Lennon–McCartney songs, interspersed with scripted commentary from Lennon and McCartney. In addition, the Beatles performed both sides of their current single, “Day Tripper” and “We Can Work It Out“. Peter Sellers performed a comedic interpretation of “A Hard Day’s Night“, in the style of stage actor Laurence Olivier’s portrayal of Richard III.

The special served as further recognition for the Beatles, particularly Lennon and McCartney, outside the usual parameters of pop music. It followed the band members being presented with their MBEs in late October 1965 and led to a surge in the number of cover versions of Lennon–McCartney songs. The special was not shown again until December 1985, when it aired as part of Channel 4’s celebration of 30 years of Granada Television.

Background and filming

The Music of Lennon & McCartney was a project initiated by Johnnie Hamp, who had championed the Beatles on Granada Television in 1962, a year before the band achieved national fame. Hamp intended the 1965 special to be a tribute to the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership. Negotiations to ensure the Beatles’ participation were held for two months. The format was a variety special. Paul McCartney later said that the show “wasn’t really our thing”, and that he and John Lennon only agreed to participate out of loyalty towards Hamp. While the band committed to the Granada project, they turned down an invitation to perform at the Royal Variety Show and refused to reprise the Beatles Christmas Shows they had held over the 1963–64 and 1964–65 holiday seasons.

Filming took place at Granada’s studios in Manchester on 1–2 November 1965. The Beatles interrupted the recording sessions for their album Rubber Soul, which they were under pressure to complete for a pre-Christmas release, in order to appear on the programme. Lennon and McCartney’s contributions included delivering the scripted links between other artists’ performances of their songs. George Harrison and Ringo Starr joined their bandmates to film mimed performances of both sides of the Beatles’ forthcoming single, “Day Tripper” and “We Can Work It Out“. The set design featured scaffolding around the walls, and steps and ladders. The harmonium played by Lennon during “We Can Work It Out” was the same instrument seen in Granada’s popular soap opera Coronation Street. The Pamela Devis Dancers provided the choreography for some of the musical segments.

Peter Sellers filmed his contribution in advance at a studio in London, due to his other film commitments. The Beatles admired R&B singer Esther Phillips and had her flown over from America to give her first performances in the UK.

Programme content

All information per John Winn’s book Way Beyond Compare: The Beatles’ Recorded Legacy, Volume One, 1962–1965, unless otherwise noted.

Part 1

• The George Martin Orchestra, medley including “I Feel Fine” – ends with a cut to Lennon and McCartney playing a cymbal with drumsticks
• Peter and Gordon, “A World Without Love” – introduced by Lennon and McCartney after the pair have listened to some cover versions of their songs played on set props such as a Victrola, a reel-to-reel tape machine, and a transistor radio
• Lulu, “I Saw Him Standing There”
• Alan Haven and Tony Crombie, “A Hard Day’s Night”
• Fritz Spiegl’s Barock and Roll Ensemble,^[16] medley including “She Loves You” – introduced by Lennon and McCartney; the ensemble members wear Baroque-era costumes and powdered wigs, and are surrounded by a crowd of women dressed in contemporary Mod fashions
• The Beatles, “Day Tripper” – accompanied by a group of go-go dancers

Part 2

• Paul McCartney/Marianne Faithfull, “Yesterday” – starts with McCartney miming to the Beatles’ 1965 track and cuts abruptly, at the start of the second verse, to Faithfull miming to her recent recording, which she sings in a different key
• Antonio Vargas, “She Loves You” – preceded by Lennon and McCartney walking around the set while they discuss foreign-language interpretations of their songs
• Dick Rivers, “Ces Mots Qu’on Oublie un Jour (Things We Said Today)”
• Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas, “Bad to Me”
• Cilla Black, “It’s for You”

Part 3

• The Beatles, “We Can Work It Out”
• The George Martin Orchestra, “Ringo’s Theme (This Boy)” – accompanied by a group of go-go dancers
• Henry Mancini, “If I Fell – introduced by McCartney
• Esther Phillips, “And I Love Him” – introduced by Lennon
• Peter Sellers, “A Hard Day’s Night”

Broadcast

Melody Maker announced the TV special, along with the imminent release of “Day Tripper” / “We Can Work It Out” and Rubber Soul, and the dates for the band’s 1965 UK tour, on the front page of its 4 December issue. The special aired on the Granada network in the north of England between 9.40 and 10.35 pm on 16 December, and then received a nationwide broadcast on ITV on 17 December. It was the only television appearance the Beatles made in conjunction with the release of their new music, as promotional films for “Day Tripper” and “We Can Work It Out” were used to promote the single on Top of the Pops and other TV shows. The Music of Lennon & McCartney inspired the band’s decision to make these clips, which served as forerunners to music videos becoming the standard means of promoting pop singles.

At the time, Lennon said of his and McCartney’s songs: “There are only about a hundred people in the world who really understand what our music is all about. Ringo, George, and a few others scattered around the globe … The reason so many people use our numbers and add nothing at all to them is that they do not understand the music. Consequently they make a mess of it.”

The recognition afforded the Lennon–McCartney partnership followed BBC Radio’s Songwriters programme on the pair’s achievements, while Mike Hennessey, writing in the same issue of Melody Maker, said the Beatles were “a pop music phenomenon which may very well never recur on such a monumental scale”, adding: “But unquestionably the biggest single factor in their unprecedented success is the superb songwriting partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.” In his book 1965: The Making of Modern Britain, Christopher Bray writes that such was the band’s ascendancy that year, the Beatles were “everywhere”, as not only leaders of a “new aristocracy” but also recipients of MBEs. The latter was an unprecedented appointment for pop stars at the time and a reflection of British politicians’ recognition of the Beatles’ influence and mass appeal. Combined with the critical and public acclaim given to Rubber Soul, the show resulted in a surge in cover recordings of works from the Beatles’ Northern Songs publishing catalogue. In author Bob Spitz’s description: “By mid-1966, an astounding eighty-eight Lennon–McCartney songs had been recorded in over 2,900 versions. Gershwin finally had competition.”

Availability

The Music of Lennon & McCartney was not aired again until 30 December 1985. It was shown on Channel 4 as part of an evening of programmes recognising 30 years of Granada Television. Due to this broadcast, the programme began circulating among bootleg collectors for the first time. The “Day Tripper” segment was included in the Beatles 1+ CD and DVD set, released in November 2015.

Among Beatles biographers, John Winn describes the Granada special as a “semisuccessful attempt to spotlight John and Paul’s songwriting abilities”. He says that the pair’s “scripted banter is delivered awkwardly” and “neither are comfortable with the whole idea of the show, let alone the corny manner in which they are participating.” Hunter Davies similarly finds Lennon and McCartney’s spoken contributions “corny”, although he gives the programme a score of seven out of ten with the assessment: “Great tribute show, with two fine Beatles performances as well.” Rolling Stone critic Rob Sheffield recognises Sellers’ segment as an “offbeat highlight” in which the comedian renders “the lyrics as a Shakesperean monologue … making them sound even filthier”. […]

One of the reasons we’re doing this show is as a favour to Johnny Hamp, who risked his job by including us on an early TV show when we were unknown.

Paul McCartney – From New Musical Express – November 12, 1965

We did a television programme in November: The Music of Lennon and McCartney. It was planned as a kind of tribute, a showcase of stars singing songs that John and I had written. The idea had come from the director, Johnny Hamp, a mate. (We knew a lot of people at his company, Granada; the first TV show we did was with them. The Granada studios were only half an hour away from us in Liverpool, so we would just go up the road.)

We weren’t really that keen, but Johnny was very persuasive and a nice bloke, so we were happy to do it for him. He’d told us he had Cilla Black doing one of the songs—Cilla was an old mate—and that Henry Mancini was to be another on the show. It was a great honour that someone as good as Henry would be doing our songs, so altogether, we couldn’t really turn it down.

It was great to meet Hank Mancini, because like most people we’d loved “Moon River.” The line “My huckleberry friend” had done us in; after Breakfast at Tiffany’s he was a hero.

Fritz Spiegel was on the show. He did a baroque version of one of our tunes. People were doing a lot of that at the time: dressing in white wigs and pretending they were a baroque string quartet. Baroque and Roll!! […]

Also in the TV show was Peter Sellers. I didn’t know him too well. […] But I met Peter later; a very nice bloke, pretty hung up, and, like a lot of comedians, he wanted to be a musician. He was as I recall, but on this show he did a very funny impression of Larry Olivier doing “A Hard Day’s Night”. […]

Before the show, Johnny Hamp had asked us if we had any real favourites of the Lennon/McCartney cover versions out at the time. Esther Phillips was my big favourite. She’d changed our “And I Love Her” to “And I Love Him” and did a great version of it. The sort of people we were listening to then were on Stax and Motown, black American, mainly. George used to have a great collection of Stax records on his jukebox. I liked Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, people like that. The Miracles were a big influence on us, where Little Richard had been earlier. Now, for us, Motown artists were taking the place of Richard. We loved the black artists so much, and it was the greatest accolade to have somebody with one of those real voices, as we saw it, sing our own songs (we’d certainly been doing theirs). So I turned Johnny on to Esther Phillips, and he got her over for the show.

Paul McCartney – From “The Beatles Anthology” book, 2000

BEATLE SHOW

As a tribute to the works of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Granada TV are to produce a 50-minute spectacular about them later this year. Producer Johnny Hamp plans to record the show in late autumn for screening in December. Cilla Black, Peter and Gordon, the Fourmost, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Ella Fitzgerald and the Silkie are also likely to appear.

From Record Mirror – September 4, 1965

Beatles-TV & discs

A MAMMOTH TV spectacular starring the Beatles will be screened in December, and a new single and LP are due next month. John Lennon and Paul McCartney will MC Granada’s 50-minute show on December 17. It will centre round the composing works of John and Paul and feature performances by a number of artistes who have recorded their works.

The Beatles’ next LP will contain fourteen tracks, all of which are being recorded during the next few weeks. At the same time, material for the single will be waxed.

From Record Mirror – October 7, 1965

Eighty-nine in all-star Beatles TV spectacular!

THE BEATLES and eighty-five others — this is the colossal cast of the most spectacular Beatles TV show ever, being filmed in Manchester next Monday and Tuesday for transmission on Friday, December 17. Producer Johnny Hamp has even signed PETER SELLERS to sing “A Hard Day’s Night” in the 50-minute spectacular!

Details of the rest of the programme were disclosed to the NME on Tuesday; the Beatles themselves will sing two new Lennon-McCartney compositions in the show, which is to honour the two composers.

Paul will sing the first verse of “Yesterday” and MARIANNE FAITHFULL will sing the rest of the number; CILLA BLACK will perform “It’s For You”; PETER and GORDON “World Without Love”; BILLY J. KRAMER “Bad To Me”; and LULU “I Saw Him Standing There.”

ESTHER PHILLIPS is flying to Britain from Miami specially to perform “And I Love Him” and RICHARD ANTHONY from Paris to sing “All My Loving” in French.

A 25-piece orchestra led by Beatles manager GEORGE MARTIN will play “I Feel Fine” and “Another Girl”; FRITZ SPIEGL and six members of the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra will give a Mozart-style interpretation of “She Loves You”; and ALAN HAVEN and TONY CROMBIE will do jazz versions of “A Hard Day’s Night.”

John and Paul will link items. Also booked to appear are 12 dancers and 10 models.

Recording sessions planned for the Beatles this week were cancelled — because the group ran out of songs! They are working on an LP and single for December release.

Recording manager George Martin told the NME: “The boys have gone away to write some more, and we hope to resume next week. We are not waxing songs by other composers—we want this to be an all-Lennon-McCartney album.”

● Martin may record an album and single in America with Matt Monro in December. Next month he will produce the West End cast LP of Lionel Bart’s musical, “Twang!”

From New Musical Express – October 29, 1965

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Granada TV Centre

This was the 4th concert played at Granada TV Centre.

A total of 4 concerts have been played there • 1962 • Oct 17 Evening • Oct 29 • Dec 17 • 1965 • Dec 16

Setlist for the concert

1. Paul McCartney and Marianne Faithfull

1. Yesterday

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Paul McCartney began singing "Yesterday" and after 20 seconds, Marianne Faithfull takes over.

   Performed by : Paul McCartney • Marianne Faithfull

2. The Beatles

1. Day Tripper

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Mimed performance

2. We Can Work It Out

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Mimed performance