Stuart Maconie – broadcaster, prolific author – has a brilliant and original new perspective on the Beatles. His latest book With A Little Help From Their Friends identifies the 100 people who had the greatest impact on their story, from the inner circle to bit-part players – schoolfriends, girlfriends, managers, muses, support acts, advisors and exploiters. It’s immensely entertaining – and revealing, even for obsessives like us. Look out for these in particular …

… memories of his Mum taking him to see the Beatles in Wigan when he was three.

… the Shakespearian supporting cast – “we know the Othellos and King Lears but there are a lot of Rosencrantz and Guildensterns” such as Marsha Albert, Melanie Coe, Pablo Fanque, Mr Mustard and the night with the poet Royston Ellis that inspired Polythene Pam.

… villains of the piece who might have been misunderstood like the Maharishi and Allen Klein.

… what Derek Taylor shouted at Peter Blake at the Q Awards.

… the full extent of the Beatles’ American merchandise catastrophe.

… the “moving and spooky” sensation of standing on the spot in Woolton where John and Paul first met - and its repercussions.

… the Sliding Doors moments and why no other band merits this kind of depth and detail.

… the hoary redundant old saw about John v Paul – “guerilla genius v slick vaudevillian” and how Peter Jackson’s Get Back made us all fall in love with them even harder and deeper than before.

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… the regrettable question he asked McCartney about Gerry & the Pacemakers.

… the tragedy of Jimmie Nicol – “being a member of the Beatles, even briefly, was the nearest equivalent to going to the Moon”.

… the impact of Paul’s life with the Ashers on the band’s intersections with art, theatre and poetry.

… how the ‘Oldies But Goldies’ album broke the band beyond the Iron Curtain.

.. why Penny Lane is like a Play for Today.

… and the greatest song the Beatles recorded.

Order With A Little Help From Our Friends here: 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

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Rob Caiger is one of those special people who turned their teenage obsession with music into a job

… from being the only one in ELO’s office who knew where the old tapes were

… to learning that what it says on the outside of the box isn’t always what’s on the tape

… through embarking on a ten-year project to put out the last Small Faces album from 1970 in its proper form

… via blindfolded journeys to mysterious destinations with the promise of finding some long-lost jewels

… and hearing a Rolling Stones out-take bleeding through a multi-track by the Move

… through the vault under Smithfield Market out of which tapes would sometimes emerge covered in blood

… to preparing for a future where nobody who was there will be able to explain how and why things were recorded

… this is the world as seen by the remarkably dedicated people who put together the box sets we all hanker for.

The Small Faces: The Autumn Stone record and CD - https://www.thesmallfaces.com/shop/

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Hoary old tales retold – ideally in an Irish accent - and new ones prized from the giddy carousel of rock and roll news which, this week, features …

… was there a better stage name than Rick Derringer?

… Linda Ronstadt, Ronnie Spector, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and other new biopics under construction.

… genuinely ‘iconic’ rock images – the Ziggy lightning stipe, Johnny Cash at San Quentin, Elvis dancing in Jailhouse Rock, Dylan and Suze Rotolo in Jones Street …

… our old pal Barry McIlheney, his Belfast band Shock Treatment and the time he asked U2 to draw a duck.

… the thin wall that separates hilarity and grief.

… how TikTok and a 1962 B-side booted the 87-year old Connie Francis.

… Banned words! – ‘iconic, circle back, reach out, Ramones-esque, eponymous sophomore effort’ and other clichés that MUST be banished!

… “Sgt Pepper: it’s like the Beatles on acid!”

… why 80 per cent of the stadium experience is beyond our control.

... how Freddie Mercury still makes headlines beyond the grave.

… the real Rikki in ‘Rikki Don’t Lose that Number’.

… and when you find yourself at a Springsteen gig next to a Trump supporter.

Watch the Barry McIlheney podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjw-6HZWa-E

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Martha Wainwright is a key member of the Wainwright/McGarrigle clan, all of them big favourites of ours. She’s currently on her 20th anniversary tour and looks back here at the first shows she ever saw and played which involves …

… growing up in a folk dynasty in Montreal.

… the sight of Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen, backing singers on Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man tour, “who made me want to be onstage too”.

… the story of ‘Matapedia’, the song Kate McGarrigle wrote when an old boyfriend thought she was her teenage daughter.

… her first shows playing Elvis, Dylan and Woody Guthrie songs on the coffeehouse circuit.

… singing with her brother Rufus and her cousins with Kate & Anna McGarrigle at folk festivals.

… onstage at the Roches’ Christmas shows in New York.

… the time her brother stole the show over Emmylou Harris: “I thought I want that kind of attention!”

… seeing Pink Floyd’s The Wall in a Montreal hockey stadium, aged 9 – “a very marking experience”.

… the songs of her mother’s she always plays: “I’m obsessed with her legacy”.

Martha Wainwright 20th Anniversary tour tickets here: https://marthawainwright.com/shows

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Small boy begins breeding budgerigars in Liverpool, makes enough to buy a drum kit and becomes the power behind Big In Japan, the Slits, the Creatures and Siouxsie and the Banshees. And one half of punk rock’s most famous couples. The immensely engaging Budgie has finally written his memoir, ‘The Absence’, and talks to us from Berlin about …

… are bands only as good as their drummers?

… Siouxsie, the Ice Queen goth-in-waiting who was actually “a cackling crazy tomboy from Chiselhurst”.

… playing Shadows instruments in a nightclub cabaret, aged 13.

… the gnawing pain of not being asked to play Live Aid – “we just weren’t part of that all-pals-together-in-the-wonderful word of music”.

… “World Exclusive!”: seeing Bill Nighy in a band in the ‘70s singing Rosalita.

… the Apache and Wipeout drum patterns in the rhythms of the Slits and Banshees.

… in praise of drummers: Bill Buford, Phil Collins, the Glitter Band, Humble Pie’s Jerry Shirley.

… the peculiar world of the teenage budgerigar breeder.

… the dynamic of the Slits – “Palmolive, off-the-scale crazy”.

… ‘You're The Biggest Thing Since Powdered Milk’ by Burke Shelley’s Budgie, Humble Pie’s ‘Rockin’ the Fillmore’ and when you only have one cassette in your car and it’s ‘Wonderworld’ by Uriah Heep.

… Siouxsie’s Jim Morrison fixation and lack of ambition.

… the advantage of being in a band with a girl singer.

… and the likelihood of a Banshees’ reunion.

Order Budgie’s memoir ‘the Absence’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Absence-Memoirs-Banshee-Drummer/dp/1399621564

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The two-man pedalo of enquiry sets out on the Bank Holiday boating lake of news pausing to consider …

… Florence Welch, Dua Lipa and the rise of the rock and roll book club.

… the 92 year-old that Bob Dylan supported at the Cascades Amphitheatre, Ridgefield.

… the Beatles had 18 drummers!

… the sad end to Billy Joel’s tour schedule.

… is Hollywood dead?

… what’s your relationship with reading if your first experience of literature is dressing up as a wizard on World Book Day?

… why is there something unfailingly comic about drummers being fired?

… “No nudity! No voluminous outfits!”: Cannes new red carpet ruling.

… is Chimes Of Freedom Bob Dylan at ‘peak wordage’?

… are books and record sleeves the new antiques, items to furnish a room?

… Sherlock Holmes, Hunter S Thompson: Corey Hart of Slipknot’s recommended reading.

… and how Springsteen is taunting Trump.

Plus Starry Eyed And Laughing, old drummer gags and who the hell’s seen Ne Zha 2 or Mickey 17?

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Dylan Jones – writer, former editor of i-D, Arena and GQ - was 15 in 1975 and dressed like Jimmy McCulloch of Wings (“a lot of denim and silk scarves”), a time he thinks had enormous influence on the following five decades. There are many highlights in his latest book ‘1975: The Year The World Forgot’, a lot of them discussed here with David and Mark, including …

… the lasting impact of the cover of Patti Smith’s Horses.

… the “frightening” Millie Jackson, 50 years ahead of her time.

… why Blood On The Tracks was the first middle-aged rock album.

… the information black-out and the value of the ‘70s rock press - particularly Street Life – for such experimental music.

… how the sarcasm of Steely Dan still feels contemporary – “Donald Trump is a figure they could have made up 50 years ago”.

… the three key rhythms of the ‘70s – Fela Kuti’s afro-beat, James Brown’s funk and Klaus Dinger’s Neu!-beat.

… the reason Donna Summer’s Love To Love You Baby is 17 minutes long.

… how Brian Eno’s accident led to the birth of ambient music.

… “writing about pop music allows you to write about anything”.

… how the sophistication and intellect of the mid-‘70s was pilloried in Punk’s Year Zero.

… the Quiet Storm genre - aka “foreplay music” – from Sade to Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye.

... the unrecognised power of the female record-buyer and the sexism of the rock press.

… and the greatest record of 1975!

Pre-order ‘1975: The Year The World Forgot’ here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/1975-World-Forgot-Dylan-Jones/dp/1408721988

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The Beach Boys’ SMiLE was abandoned by Brian Wilson in 1967 and eventually performed at an emotional gathering of the faithful in London 37 years later. For writer and lecturer David Leaf it became an obsession. He made a documentary about it in 2004 and has just published ‘SMiLE: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Brian Wilson’ drawn from detailed conversations with the people involved. He talks to us here about his discoveries, which include …

... the Rolling Stone story that kick-started his obsession.

… “a bicycle ride from Plymouth Rock to Hawaii” and other early plans for the album.

… how Leonard Bernstein, the Beatles and Derek Taylor racked up the pressure in the studio.

… why the other Beach Boys – and Capitol and Murry Wilson - felt the new music was a threat to their livelihood.

… how Brian composed the “teenage symphony for God” that became an albatross around his neck.

... “Ray Davies needed a deadline”: the perils of endless recording time.

… the magnetism of Van Dyke Parks, a man who “talks in paragraphs”.

... the imagined impact on the world and the band’s career if SMiLE had come out in 1967.

… the birth of “art rock” versus the strictures of the music business.

… the value of the SMiLE myth in the eventual rebirth of the Beach Boys.

… the reaction to its long-awaited performance at the Festival Hall in 2004.

... why Brian thought shelving the album would save the group yet “they went from a No 1 single to an act nobody cared about in under a year”.

... and the greatest Beach Boys record of all time.

Order SMiLE: the Rise, Fall & Resurrection of Brian Wilson here: https://omnibuspress.com/products/smile-the-rise-fall-and-resurrection-of-brian-wilson-published-10th-october-2024?_pos=1&_psq=smile&_ss=e&_v=1.0

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