PAUL McCARTNEY & The Tudor Minstrels

In the autumn of 1966 the Beatles had just finished touring, Revolver was in the shops, and the boys were having a break. George was getting to grips with the sitar in India, John was filming How I Won The War in Spain, Ringo was knocking around (and visiting John on set), and Paul was setting up house in St. John's Wood, as well as immersing himself in London's underground. He'd also let NEMS know that he would like to write some film music, so when the opportunity arose to compose for the comedy drama The Family Way, he brewed up a couple of tunes - the strident Theme From The Family Way and the pretty Love In The Open Air (click here to hear it). They were duly arranged by George Martin and recorded by studio musicians in time for a soundtrack album to appear on Decca in December. Having assured Martin that they had no intention of extracting a 45, Decca cheekily did just that, crediting it to The Tudor Minstrels (a nod to the Boulting Brothers' company, Tudor Films). By this time Martin had recorded different versions of both tracks to be released on United Artists, so the singles ended up competing with each other. Hey-ho, both flopped, as did the LP.

The Tudor Minstrels disc certainly makes for pleasant listening, and can be called the first solo musical project by a Beatle (albeit not actually featuring one). It carries sole writing credits for Paul, even though John helped with Love In The Open Air. Incidentally, the 45 that UA released in October 1967 to tie in with How I Won The War doesn't feature any Lennon involvement, despite being credited to his character in the film.

Here's the full story behind Paul's work on The Family Way:

Also on December 24th 1966, Eric Clapton reviewed the Tudor Minstrels' 45 thus (as part of Melody Maker's weekly Blind Date feature):

JOHN FAULKNER

The following comment was left earlier today by someone called John Faulkner, regarding my recent post about Simon Finn. Unfortunately Google put it straight into the 'spam' file, so I'll post it here.

'Perhaps if you were even one third as successful as Graham Cross, then you would save your "cheesy" comments for the lavatory wall - which is where they belong. We all "cut corners" hahaha. To use an overworked saying, get a life, and let those who know better than you get on with theirs. By the way your blog sucks.'

SIMON FINN: a mystery

On March 27th an eBay seller named echo*beach sold a copy of Simon Finn's Pass The Distance, complete with its insert, for £183 to a member named rememberthethetis. The insert, however, had what the seller described as 'a diagonal cut on the top left' and 'what appear to be signatures across the three band members'. Here's his picture:

Barely a week later, another eBay seller named xxxrecords sold a copy of Simon Finn's Pass The Distance, complete with its insert, for £399. Bizarrely, this time round the insert had the same signatures as the other copy, but the lower right-hand corner was also missing. Here's his picture:

The description contained no reference to the insert having writing on it or a corner chopped off. Now, xxxrecords is renowned for his meticulous interest in being precise in his listings, and for carrying out painstaking research into his items, so he clearly believed this insert with his copy to be complete and untampered with. Therefore this question arises: are there three different variants of the Simon Finn insert? One that is square with no signatures, one that has signatures but the top left corner missing, and one with signatures and both the top left and bottom right corners missing?

By the way, here's the insert with no corners missing:

UPDATE: The eBay username rememberthethetis was torpedoed by its owner very shortly after this post appeared. He has now switched to another username.  

THE WCPAEB: "It's gone all pop art"

As is well-attested, in September 1965 the Oklahoma-raised and LA-based playboy Bob Markley hosted an end-of-tour party for the Yardbirds, at which he noticed that the kids providing music were getting more female attention than him. He therefore offered to buy them new equipment if they let him join them. Thus was born The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. I was amazed to stumble upon this account, phoned in to Record Mirror from the bash itself.

JIMI HENDRIX: "I want to turn people on"

To promote his forthcoming European tour, Jimi Hendrix gave his last ever interviews to well-known journalists such as Keith Altham, Rob Partridge and Norman Jopling at London's Cumberland Hotel on September 11th 1970. Less than a week later, Jimi was dead. Jopling's piece appeared in Music Now on September 12th. I'd never seen it before, so thought I'd post it here.

Mick Jagger: 'as he really is'

I doubt Mick was too thrilled when his spotty adolescent brother penned this for NME in June 1965:

Beatles For Sale: 'a usually reliable source'

According to Record Mirror of October 10th 1964, the cover of Beatles For Sale was originally going to show the boys lighting their ever-present 'ciggies' under the Arc de Triomphe...