Furore #28: The Beatles in 1963

 "It's certainly a thrill."

Regular readers of this blog will know that one of my all-time favourite Beatles’ books is The Beatles’ London, A Guide to 467 Beatle Sites by Piet Schreuders, Mark Lewisohn and Adam Smith. It has inspired me and similar minded friends to walk (on feet) something like forty miles around the streets of the capital photographing places with a Beatles’ connection, and prompted me to start There Are Places I Remember – The Beatles’ Liverpool Locations as I made clear in my very first blog way back in 2009.

 

From day one, I’ve loved the research aspect of this hobby, finding new places with a proven Beatles’ connection and photographing them, but writing about my discoveries has always the difficult part. I left school in 1986 and had not had cause to write anything of substance unrelated to my employment until I started the blog. I think I’ve improved over the last 15 years to a point where I’ve developed a style of my own, such as it is, but I’m still not entirely convinced I have it in me to write an entire book, although those who know me have encouraged me to do so for several years.  

 

Of course, some of my blogs have been more successful than others and I’m particularly proud of being the first to pinpoint the newsagents where Paul worked at the time he first met John, of proving where Paul's (not Mike's) photograph of a teenage George Harrison carrying flippers was taken, for identifying the only known photos of the Beatles at Litherland Town Hall, and for making chronological sense of the extant childhood photographs of John Lennon, which in turn inspired me to do something similar with all the photographs of the Beatles taken in 1961.  

 

It might have been one of these aforementioned blogs, or a different one entirely, or something completely unrelated, that first brought me to the attention of Piet Schreuders a few years ago.  As well as being co-author of The Beatles’ London, Piet also publishes Furore magazine, which occasionally has a Beatles’ special. He was kind enough to post them to me. I can’t recommend these issues highly enough as the articles are among some of the most interesting I’ve ever read, particularly those that take an in depth look at some of the locations for famous Beatles’ photographic shoots and provide then and now comparison photos - exactly what I try to do here.

 

You can imagine then how flattered I was when one of the people whose work has been such an inspiration to me first sent me an obscure Beatles' photo, and asked me to try and establish where it was taken, and he’s done it with other photos since.

 

Piet has now issued another Beatles special of his Furore magazine. The centre-piece of  issue #28 is an interview with Maureen O’Grady, a teen reporter from Boyfriend magazine, in an article which chronicles the advent of pop magazines in the British press in 1963, illustrated with memorabilia from her archives including some previously unseen photos. Very sadly, the author of the article, Andre Barreau, who many of you might know played the part of George Harrison in the Bootleg Beatles from 1980 until 2017 passed away in August 2023 before his contribution could be published. His friend Mark Lewisohn has contributed a eulogy, noting how Andre invented the work ‘locationist’ to describe the sort of person who goes around taking then and now photographs of Beatles’ locations.  I finally have a job title!

 

In this new issue, you will find an article about Beatles autopen autographs by Roger Stormo of the Daily Beatle Blog, ‘Abbey Road Trivia’ by Greg Armstrong who writes about the stamped dots on the wall pictured on the back cover of the album with some remarkable photographs of the same wall taken by Laurie Gay Linvill in 1970. Andre Barreau also contributes a piece on the location of Fiona Adam’s famous ‘Twist And Shout’ EP photograph correcting the earlier identification for it in The Beatles’ London in the process, while Piet looks at the ‘Beatles Ashram’ in Rishikesh and tries to pinpoint precisely what was where at the time they visited.

 

Last but hopefully not least, it’s an absolute thrill to confirm that this new issue of Furore also includes an article written by me, my first published work in print.  Piet invited me to contribute a piece about the efforts that are sometimes required when trying to identify where a particular photograph was taken, in this case the one that appears on the front cover of the magazine. I spent many long nights studying early 1963 photographs of the Beatles, particularly George and his atrocious fringe, but did I solve the mystery?  You'll have to buy the magazine to find out!  

 

Furore #28 can be ordered from FuroreMagazine.com

 

* Thanks to Piet Schreuders and Mark Lewisohn for their encouragement.

John and Yoko: Peace Nuts.

‘On 15 June 1968, John Lennon and I planted two acorns for peace at Coventry Cathedral. It was the first of our many Peace Events’.  (Yoko Ono, 1 June 2008).

 

Between June and August 1968, the first National Sculpture Exhibition was held in the ruins of St. Michael’s Cathedral, Coventry. The exhibition was sponsored by the Arts Council and by invitation of Canon Stephen Edmund Verney.

 

The Cathedral had been destroyed during the Luftwaffe raid on Coventry on 14 November 1940, and in common with St. Luke’s Church in Liverpool was left as a permanent memorial to the Blitz.

 

In early June, John and Yoko managed to secure an invitation via Anthony Fawcett who was a member of the organising committee to display their work alongside such renowned sculptors as Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Roland Piche.

 

Very much in the early stages of their relationship, both physically and creatively, John’s idea was informed by an earlier work of Yoko’s he’d seen at the Indica Gallery on the day they first met. Yoko’s ‘sculpture’ was an apple on a perspex display stand, an organic, evolving piece representing the life cycle of birth, decay, death and rebirth (the fruit gradually decomposing until only the seeds remained).

 

John decided to plant two acorns as a living sculpture alongside all the ‘heavy old sculptures’ explaining that ‘in fifty years’ time, people will understand what we’re trying to say when there are a couple of lovely great oak trees up there’.

 

Fawcett warned the couple that they might face resistance from Canon Verney who was troubled by the couple’s out of wedlock relationship. Both were actually married at the time, but not to each other.

 

The day before the exhibition opened, John’s driver Les Anthony and Anthony Fawcett arrived in a car towing a trailer where they were outside the Cathedral by Canon Verney.  On the trailer was a large, white, garden seat in wrought iron, a number of plant pots and acorns.  Verney flatly refused to allow them to unload, and a huge argument ensued.

 

After ‘much nastiness’ and several phone calls to some of Britain’s top sculptors, the Canon realised he could not go back on his work and relented.

 

Two acorns were ceremoniously planted in plant pots facing easterly and westerly positions in a hole dug for the occasion by John and Yoko, both of whom arrived sensibly dressed for gardening work in their white suits, much to the amusement of onlookers.  The circular iron seat was designed to slot together, surrounding the acorns which would then grown inside the bench. On the seat was an engraved silver-plated plaque reading ‘Yoko’ by John Lennon, ‘John’ by Yoko Ono, some time in May 1968.  

 

Lennon told the Daily Express that the planting was to symbolize that ‘East and West have met in Yoko and me’.

  

As late comers to the Exhibition, John and Yoko’s acorn piece was not included in the official catalogue and so they made their own, arranging to be photographed by Keith McMillan at the appropriately named ‘Sprout’, a basement next to Gregory Sam’s macrobitotic restaurant in Notting Hill Gate. The resultant image made clever use of perspective to give the impression that John and Yoko were sprouting from the plastic flowerpots.

 

Coventry Telegraph, 17 June 1968

Two days after the exhibition opened, the Coventry Telegraph reported that Mr Norman Pegen, part of the group responsible for staging the event had claimed he had taken the decision not to include John and Yoko’s submission inside the consecrated ground of the Cathedral, which incidentally had been visited by three of the Beatles – Paul, George and either John or Ringo, and Kenny Lynch on Sunday 24 February during the Helen Shapiro tour. 

The bench and acorns had been moved about 50-feet to the Cathedral's gardens. Pegan was quoted as saying ‘the Lennon-Yono (sic) piece is very good – but only as a garden seat and is being used as such by visitors’. Another member of the Cathedral staff noted that fans had already stolen the plaque. 

Coventry Telegraph, 20 June 1968

  

On 22 June 1968, it was reported that the acorns had been stolen.

 

Coventry Telegraph, 22 June 1968

More coverage in the Coventry Evening Telegraph, 25 June 1968 (both)

On Friday 28 June John wrote a letter in response to Canon Verney’s stance prohibiting the installation of John and Yoko’s sculpture within the grounds of the Cathedral, and the distribution of their privately produced catalogue.

The letter finds John at times angry, at others thoughtful and seeking appeasement: ‘Thank you for your Christian attitude….do you have to explain an acorn? I don’t understand why you can’t distribute our leaflet unless you worry about gossip...You talk about young people as if you know something about them - you obviously don't or you wouldn't be worried about our influence on them. Jesus would have loved our piece for what it is… could we not substitute something that is not worth stealing… ‘Sit here and think of a church growing into a bigger church’.

 

Failing to reach a compromise, a driver was sent to retrieve the bench. It was returned to Kenwood, John's home and was seen briefly in the 1988 'Imagine' film.