Friday 17 June 2016

As Time Goes By by DerekTaylor

A really brilliant and a different take on the 60s, includes great Beatles inside information. Derek Taylor is famous for being the Beatles press agent during Beatlemania and then went off to work for The Byrds, Captain Beefheart among others as a press agent as well as one of the original organizers for the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.  

Taylor portrays early Beatlemania as a very scary world - especially in America where he meets the Mayor's wife who insists that The Beatles wake up from their sleep to meet her and her daughter. Also when Derek Taylor takes a ride with someone who not only wants to meet the Beatles with his son but is also a horrible and violent racist. Incredible snapshots of that period of time, and all of it has a tinge of disgust or a real heavy darkness. 

The best, almost magical chapter describes a trip (in more than one sense of the word) with McCartney to play with a brass band up north (the track 'thingumybob'), on the way back they stop at a village and treat the people in the pub to a rendition of McCartney's new song 'Hey Jude' on the pub piano.


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