Category Archives: The Fireman

The Beatles with Records – Part Four

Posted on by
8

Earlier posts about the Beatles actually being photographed holding either their own records or those of other artists have generated a lot of interest. People are sending in more photos from their own collections and so its time to do a Part Four.

(You can see the original blog posts here:  Part One; Part Two; and Part Three.)

This first one is not exactly the Beatles themselves holding records, but William sent in this great shot of ladies on the EMI Records factory floor packing stacks and stacks of copies of “Rubber Soul”. Its from 1965:

I reckon that is a beauty. Speaking of “Rubber Soul”, Claude Defer in France sent this great photo of Paul McCartney with a copy of that LP – you can see the rear cover of “Rubber Soul” in this shot:

Claude also sent in this more recent one of Paul, this time with his 1997 LP “Flaming Pie”:

Thanks Claude! (Claude Defer by the way is a prolific Beatles collector and expert and he has released a book in France, with his co-writer Hervé Boudaillez, about the Beatles French Discography, from 1971 following the split of the Fab’s until the last vinyl record manufactured in France. The text of the book is in French, and Volume One (which deals with the 45 rpm releases) has 200 pages, including more than 1,000 pictures (sleeves and discs, with details):

Back to the Beatles with Records – Part Four…and some more Paul McCartney, this time with Mary Hopkin in 1969 with a copy of the LP he produced for her, “Postcard”:

I also found this McCartney one. It’s Paul at the HMV store in London for the 2008 release of “Electric Arguments”, a collaboration with Youth released under the pseudonym The Fireman (more on the Super Deluxe edition of this album soon). Here he’s holding the double vinyl LP pressing:

This next one comes from Canadian Jerry Levitan, author of a great little book called “I Met the Walrus“, which details John and Yoko’s visit to the city of Toronto in 1969 and an extended personal brush with fame he had with the couple. He took this photograph of John Lennon signing and drawing a caricature of himself and Yoko for Jerry on the cover of the “Two Virgins” album:

 

And finally to another one of John, taken on the publicity campaign trail in 1971 for his single “Power to the People”:

To see more Beatles with Records see: Parts 1, 2, 3, 5 , 6, 7 , 8 and 9.

FAB: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney

Posted on by
5

I was in Hobart, Tasmania this week and a friend mentioned at dinner that he’d just picked up a new biography of Paul McCartney.

“What new biography?” I said, as I’d not heard of it. “Oh, its just been released. Looks good”, said he.

Well, next day I had an hour or two to kill waiting for the plane home, and so decided to take wander along the main street of the town. I popped into the local Angus and Robertson bookstore – and to my great surprise there it was on the shelf in its paperback form:

Front cover "FAB: An Intimate Life of Paul Mccartney"

As you can see from the Australian and UK cover above (yes, I bought a copy), it’s called “FAB: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney”, written by Howard Sounes. Harper Collins is the Australian publisher and their website says it was published here and in the UK only very recently – on 25 August, 2010.

Until this week, I’d never heard of it! It has certainly flown under the radar as there hasn’t been much written about it in the lead-up to its release. At least, it flew under my Beatles radar….

In the US it gets a different cover:

As one reviewer asked, does the world need another Paul McCartney biography? The answer is that while this one does trawl through the early days once more, it brings us up right up to date with what has been a prolific and interesting later career. In fact the work includes “Electric Arguments”, “Good Evening New York City”, the Beatles Remastered releases, and his illustrated children’s book “High in the Clouds” released last year.

And it is big – 634 pages. I only got it yesterday – so a review will be coming later.

If you’d like to get a taste Sounes, who worked as a journalist for the Daily Mail in England, has published lengthy extracts from the book that you can read here and here. His other books include “Down the Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan”.

Beatlesnews has also published a short article about author Howard Sounes and this new McCartney book.  The Liverpool Echo has published an interview with the author. And there’s a very good review of the book by Simon Sweetman here.

Rare McCartney – Dance ‘Til We’re High

Posted on by
2

OK. Another fairly difficult-to-find McCartney CD single has come into the collection this week.

When Paul’s alter ego The Fireman (being Paul McCartney and long-time collaborator/producer Youth) released his third album last year (2008) there were three collectable promotional releases associated with the project.

The first was the full album – but with a different cover – that was only sent to reviewers and radio stations. (More on this in a forthcoming post…).

The second was a promo-only CD single containing the song “Sing the Changes”. The numbers of these floating around for sale on Ebay, etc. were a fair bit higher – so there were obviously more of these pressed than third item on the list – another promo-only CD single containing the track “Dance ’til We’re High”. These were far harder to find, and pretty costly on Ebay as a result.

The CD is a digipack gate-fold cardboard sleeve featuring photographs inside and out from the same sessions as the photos from the official album release cover and booklet.  The two other promotional items mentioned above also have similar photos – so if you have them all they sit together nicely thematically with a very similar look and feel.

I have included a scan of the front cover of “Dance ’til We’re High” below, as well as a scan of the printing on the disc itself which has the words “For Promotional Use Only” on it.

If you’d like to see and read about another hard-to-find Paul McCartney CD single click here.

I’ll post some info and images of the other Fireman-related promo CD’s soon.

The Fireman  “Dance ’til We’re High”

Label:  MPL/One Little Indian

Cat. No.: 1011p7cdp

2008/UK/1 track CD Single/Promo

Dance1

"Dance 'til We're High" - The Fireman

Dance2

"Dance 'til We're High" CD