Garage Sale Beatles 45’s

Posted on September 19, 2013 by beatlesblogger

It’s not often you see 7-inch, 45rpm Beatles vinyl for sale at garage sales anymore. There are occasionally one or two, but they are now getting few and far between.

That’s why I was surprised this week when I asked after records at a local garage sale and the guy went into his house and brought out crate after crate of the small, vinyl gems. He had literally hundreds of 45’s – all pop and rock artists ranging from the 60s, 70’s and 80’s.
It took me quite a while to look through them all but the task produced a couple of nice items. Some I already owned, but others I didn’t have in my collection – so it was very worthwhile.

Here’s what came out of crates (in release date chronological order). First up, an Extended Play – four songs – from A Hard Day’s Night (1964):

Then came a copy of the Beatles Rock and Roll Music single (1965):

These next few have the release date displayed on the label:

This next one, Yoko Ono’s Walking on Thin Ice (1981) comes in a picture cover:

All the above are Australian pressings (except the John and Yoko Happy Xmas which is British). There was though one odd item in the crates. It was just the sleeve (no record inside unfortunately) of a French EP from 1964 with four songs:

I’ll keep it – in the hope of finding the correct record to go inside it one day….

At John Lennon’s House – A New e-Book Translation

Posted on September 16, 2013 by beatlesblogger

A couple of weeks ago we were contacted by a Spanish publishing company called Hércules de Ediciones. They’ve just released an e-Book called At John Lennon’s House, by a woman named Rosaura López Lorenzo.

Rosaura was born in Spain but became the Lennon’s housekeeper at the Dakota Building in New York – a job she did for just on four years.

It should be said up-front that in writing this book financial profit was the last thing on Rosaura’s mind. She says on more than one occasion that she’s not doing it for any ulterior motives. After all, Rosaura kept her unique story quiet for nearly 25 years. It was only following a chance meeting with the journalist who helped her write down her story that she finally agreed to share her experiences with the rest of the world.

John Lennon's House-tiff

When Rosaura first began work in Apartment 72 in the Dakota building she was completely unaware of the real significance and impact of Beatlemania. As a result she writes in a totally unaffected manner, and genuinely from the heart. She also says that she had Yoko Ono’s blessing to tell her story, and you have to believe her – such is her honesty in recounting what she experienced working in the Lennon’s Dakota apartments. Yes, that’s plural. One of the things we learn is that they owned and occupied at least four separate dwellings in the building. Here’s a photograph of Rosaura standing outside the Dakota:

Many people would know about John’s time in the US in the late 70s. He’d retreated from public life. He’d all but retired from the music business. He was living happily and quietly in New York, bringing up his new baby son Sean, baking bread, and living the simple life. And we learn that it was Rosaura who taught him how to bake. Born and raised in the Spanish town of Pontevedra in Galicia, she grew up in a bakery and really knew what she was doing. She recalls John saying that making bread to the ancient European tradition made him feel calm and peaceful. It’s simple observations like these which make this book so intriguing and endearing.

At the back of the book are many pages filled with photographs of Rosaura Lopez and her family. There are postcards and Christmas cards sent to her over the years by the Lennon’s. And there are many photographs of her interacting with John, Yoko, Sean, and Julian Lennon, too.

Rosaura left the employ of John and Yoko abruptly, shortly before John’s murder in 1980. She says she was sacked by Yoko after a vicious spate of rumours spread about her by another nanny keen to get her own relatives employed in the house. Rosaura didn’t get the chance to explain or defend herself for eight years. It was a chance meeting on the streets of New York which brought her face-to-face once again with Yoko. That meeting opened the opportunity for a rapprochement. Later that day the two got to talk for hours and to finally make good a wrongful dismissal. This part of the story is told in full in the book.

Rosaura’s memoir has been available since 2005, but only in Spanish (as En Casa de John Lennon):This new English e-Book translation will bring her story to many new readers. In the hundreds of thousands of words written about John Lennon here is a genuinely new and different examination from someone on the very inside of the Lennon household.

I have been browsing through the book and enjoying it a lot. It’s a very interesting and sweet little book and not at all voyeuristic. Rosaura has achieved an honest and open account of a unique period in her life – working for one of the most famous families in the world. She does it with integrity. It is well worth a read.

If you have Apple iBooks you can download At the House of John Lennon in English at iTunes here.

It is also available as a Kindle book on Amazon here.

A Visit to Some San Francisco Record Stores – Part 2

Posted on August 14, 2013 by beatlesblogger

OK. In Part One I detailed the four main record stores I was able to visit while in San Fran.

Now some detail on what I found and brought home to join the collection. Firstly, the vinyl.

At Rasputin Music on Powell (near Union Square) I found a very clean copy of George Harrison’s Living in the Material World. It was a US pressing I didn’t have – a budget re-issue on the green Capitol label:As you can see, it’s a nice clean copy and the vinyl is mint.

Also at Rasputin there were two Ringo Starr LP’s I liked the look of and they were both very reasonably priced. I have Australian pressings of both of these, but good US copies like these were a welcome addition to the collection. They are both on the Apple label and original throughout. This gatefold copy of Ringo (1973) was complete with its book of lyrics and wonderful line drawings by Klaus Voormann (who also played bass on the album):

The Fab 4 Free 4 All Beatle podcast recently reviewed the Ringo album and raved about it (see episode 60, “Ringo” – Analysis and Review). Also at Rasputin was a copy of Ringo’s Blast From Your Past which came with the original inner sleeve of photos on one side and lyrics on the other:

Later in the week I got over to the Haight-Ashbury district were there were three stores in close proximity (Recycled, Rasputin and Amoeba – all on Haight Street).

The first I visited was Recycled Records. They had some vintage Beatles LP’s, but to be honest they were fairly expensive….and so I concentrated on the Beatles as solo artists. I’ve always been keen on collecting variations of Paul McCartney’s “Russian” album called Choba B CCCP. Well, Recycled was a bit of a treasure trove as they have numerous copies in their bins and tucked away underneath on shelves. There were thirty to forty copies in all, and so I set about identifying some versions I didn’t have. There are so many variations of this particular record because it came out firstly as an 11-track album, followed later by a 13-track version. And they were pressed in about six different Russian pressing plants, each with its own label styles and variations (sometimes subtle) within those labels. I turned up four distinct copies I wanted, and they were all very reasonably priced (between US$6.00-$10.00 each). There was one 11-track version (from the Aprelevka pressing plant), two 13-track versions (Tbilisi plant and Riga plant), and one “hybrid” that had an 11-track cover but a 13-track LP inside (which I didn’t realise until I got home). Both the cover and LP are from the same factory (the Riga plant) so I’m not sure if this is legit or just a mistake….

The rear cover of the 11-track version is identified by its yellow colour:

However, this one has a 13-track LP inside – on a plain white Melodyia Records label, made at the Riga pressing plant where the cover was made too:

So. A mystery there. If anyone knows if any other copies like this exist let me know. These are the labels from the other copies of Choba B CCCP purchased at Recycled:

Of course for the full detail on all Russian Beatle and Beatle-related vinyl releases you need to visit this one, fantastic central repository.

Further down Haight Street is another Rasputin Music store and so I ducked in for a look. No vintage Beatles here, but lots of copies of the latest remastered vinyl at good prices. I did find an interesting re-issue copy of the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band’s Live Peace in Toronto LP however, complete with a reproduction of the 1970 calendar which was included with original copies. It is brand new, still sealed, looked like a good buy and so I got it:

I think this re-issue was released in 2012 through a company called Hi Horse Records (which is a subsidiary of City Hall Records). It’s on the original Apple label and has the same SW 3362 catalogue number. If anyone has any other info on this one it would be very welcome. Please drop us a line.

Then it was on to Amoeba Music’s Haight Street store – which is an enormous warehouse of a building with thousands of LP’s, CD’s and books…however, not a lot of vintage Beatles on display here either, but two very good vinyl buys none-the-less. The first was Paul McCartney’s first solo LP simply called McCartney. It is a US copy, a re-issue in very good condition and on the black Capitol label:

And last but not least a really nice copy – practically mint throughout – of George Harrison’s The Concert for Bangladesh. I already have an Australian and an unusual South African pressing of this, but have been on the lookout for a good UK copy, and of course a US example as well, which is what we have here. Amoeba had this priced at just US$14.99, which for a triple album set in such excellent condition was an absolute bargain. It came with a mint copy of the original 64-page book, and all the LPs were housed in their original brown paper inner sleeves:

So, that was a quick summary of the vinyl found in four San Francisco record stores during a short visit there last week. Next time a look at the CD’s and DVD’s I found and added to the collection.

Paul McCartney – In His Own Words

Posted on July 14, 2013 by beatlesblogger

Just got a copy of this double Paul McCartney CD set released by the BBC and AudioGO. It was a nice gift from a friend:

It’s a double interview CD with lots of BBC radio and TV interviews with Paul McCartney and the title is In His Own Words issued by Audiogo in England. It takes material from the BBC Archives ranging from 1968 to 2009 including rare material from throughout his long-spanning career, delving into both his public and private life. McCartney talks about his early influences, song-writing and life as a Beatle. The band’s eventual break-up is covered, as is the forming of Wings.

BBC audiobooks are designed to give an insight into some of the major identities in British history. These interviews delve into the past and give the opportunity to put some context around the happenings in and around the group, as well as life post-Beatles. Here are two short extracts cut together to give you a taste. The first is Paul talking about meditation, and then songwriting and his relationship with the other Beatles:

[audio https://beatlesblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/media_downloadables_samples_9781408497395.mp3]

At both the US and the UK sites this appears to be available as both a digital download and a hard-copy CD, which is what we have here.

AudioGo have also got a couple of John Lennon titles. There’s a similar-looking set also called In His Own Words which I’ll have to keep an eye out for:

They also have a HUGE book reading of a Lennon biography. It’s author Philip Norman reading his Lennon – The Life. Like Norman’s book, it is big! Volume 1 takes up no less than 16 CDs and runs 18 hours and 32 minutes:

And Volume 2 is 12 CDs, running time just a little bit shorter: 14 hours and 10 minutes….

Ringo the 4th – An Auction….

Posted on July 13, 2013 by beatlesblogger

I recently posted on getting a promo copy of Ringo Starr’s Ringo the 4th LP.

Now the fabulous Chained and Perfumed has discovered that the “power” ring that Ringo is seen wearing for the album’s cover shot is up for auction shortly:

Turns out the ring was commissioned as a Christmas gift for him by the lady who is sitting on his shoulders in the cover shot (front and back). She was also the photographer and Ringo’s then-girlfriend – Nancy Andrews. So, a self-portrait of sorts.

Never-Before-Seen Photos of the Beatles

Posted on June 10, 2013 by beatlesblogger

This coming Wednesday sees the release of Ringo Starr’s new e-book, Photograph.

It features over 100 never-before-seen images of John, Paul, George and Ringo – some of them from their last days together as a band, some from their first trip to India, and some taken during their first U.S. tour.

Ringo says he completely forgot that he took a lot of photos of the Beatles during the 1960s. He apparently discovered the images by accident after his mother had died, tucked away in boxes at her house.

Other photos featured in the book are from Ringo’s childhood in Liverpool and family gatherings.

The e-book was previewed at a press-only event at Apple’s headquarters in London last week and is set for release worldwide on June 12. It allows readers to pick up, play with and zoom in on Ringo’s photographs while scrolling through. Photograph features 69 audio stories and 11 exclusive videos, with music, animation and new interviews from Ringo Starr. Here are some screenshots:

Photograph is available for pre-order now at www.RingoPhotograph.com. A limited-edition, hand-bound version by Genesis Publications is due in December:

Two Garage Sale Books

Posted on May 28, 2013 by beatlesblogger

Sometimes when you go out to garage or yard sales hunting specifically for vinyl records you never actually see any. Not one. No Beatles records. No records at all. It can be very disheartening.

That was the case a couple of weekends ago for me. There seemed to be something of a drought of vinyl for some reason. None of the four or five places I called into that morning had a thing.

However, I did mange to get two quite interesting and collectable books – one of which I know is controversial, but more on that later….

Starting with the non-controversial book first. The guy selling it didn’t have it out on display. Because I couldn’t see any records at his sale I asked (as I always do): “You don’t have any records or CD’s do you?”. This is just in case they have some discs, but haven’t thought to put them out. It happens more than you think….

“No,” he replied. “What are you looking for?”

“I’m after anything to do with the Beatles. I’m not a dealer, I’m just a collector,” I said.

“Well, I do have a Beatles book if you’re interested”, and with that he shot off inside the house and emerged again with this:

The Beatles Forever is a vintage Beatles picture book and it was in really good condition. It’s a British publication dating from 1981. The author is Helen Spence, and as you can see from the front cover image above it has a foreword by legendary US disc jockey Alan Freedman. It is a loose chronology of the band’s journey from unknowns to super stardom and contains lots of great colour photographs on every page:

The basic premise for the book is detailed on the inside flap of the dust jacket:

It begins “The Beatles Forever is an outstanding collection of photographs dating back some twenty years to the beginning of a phenomenon which changed the face of the sixties and the sound of popular music for all time. These photographs, many published here for the first time, have been carefully gathered together to present a scrap-book of the Beatles”. And that’s a pretty acurate description:

And here is the rear cover:From this garage sale I moved on to another. These people didn’t have any vinyl or CD’s either….but they also had a book. A very thick book. A book about John Lennon:

This was a US hardback, a first edition of Albert Goldman’s much-maligned work which came out in 1988. As Wikepedia says, “The book is a product of several years of research and hundreds of interviews with many of Lennon’s friends, acquaintances, servants and musicians. Notwithstanding, it is best known for its criticism and generally negative representation of the personal lives of Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono. [It is] controversial because of its portrayal of Lennon in a highly critical light. Lennon was presented in the book as a talented but deeply flawed man who manipulated people and relationships throughout his life, flinging them aside when they were no longer useful to him. Goldman also suggested that Lennon was an anti-Semite and a heavy drug-user and that he was dyslexic and a schizophrenic. The author even went into detail about the long-rumored homosexual affair between Lennon and the Beatles manager, Brian Epstein, as well as alleging a number of liaisons by Lennon with other men, including a claim that he solicited underage male prostitutes in Thailand. This latter assertion greatly angered Yoko Ono and Paul McCartney. The book was criticised by Lennon fans for allegedly containing much unsubstantiated conjecture, and tending to present worst-case scenarios when doing so.”

I had a paperback copy of this book, but a first edition hardback in excellent condition was tempting despite it’s critical reputation. Like I said, it is very thick:

And so I bought it. I like the cover, too. A great Iain Macmillan photograph of John Lennon. If you don’t think you know Macmillan’s work, you do. He’s the guy who took the famous photos for the cover of Abbey Road. He also did a lot of other work for John and Yoko including:

The cloud on the album cover for Live Peace in Toronto
Photos on the album Some Time in New York City
The wedding cake in the Wedding Album
The merging heads label of John and Yoko’s vinyl single “Happy Xmas (War is Over)“

On the rear cover of the Goldman book Macmillan’s portrait of John his is presented simply like this:

The Beatles – The Uncut Ultimate Music Guide

Posted on May 16, 2013 by beatlesblogger

I know. I’m always a bit slow on the uptake when it comes to getting on top of the latest Beatle magazines.

I literally stumbled across this one today on the shelf at one of my local newsagent stores. I genuinely hadn’t seen it before, but it looked pretty impressive and so I bought it.

I get home, look it up, and it turns out it was actually released back in January….

It’s a 148-page Beatles special edition, published by the UK’s highly respected Uncut magazine. The magazine traces the rise of the band, its massive success, and then the eventual demise. It features interviews from the archives of Uncut, NME and Melody Maker. Looking back, the levels of access and revelation contained in the archives of these three journals is quite impressive. Their journalists sat in on meetings with Elvis Presley, travel round the United States with the Beatle touring party during the first tour, and are there as the band starts to fall apart. Alongside all these features Uncut’s current team of writers contribute in-depth new analyses of every Beatles album.

Here are some page scans from the mag, which includes unusual photos and great information on the band and their releases:

And this great photo of Beatle manager Brian Epstein – which should qualify for our Beatles With Records series of posts as well:

The Ballad of John and Yoko – By the Editors of Rolling Stone

Posted on April 18, 2013 by beatlesblogger

I was in Armidale, NSW (Australia) last week and managed (in between work meetings) to duck out to the recycled book and record store in town. I picked up a nice, used copy of book which looks to be a companion to the Rolling Stone magazine book I found earlier this year in Sydney about George Harrison. It’s similar in style and scope, only this time the editors of Rolling Stone have John Lennon and Yoko Ono as their focus:

This is the paperback edition and it came out in 1982. The book details (from the pages of Rolling Stone over the period 1967 to 1980) the love, the life and the activities of John and Yoko. It looks to be a fantastic compendium of some of the best writing about the pair as individuals, as a couple, and of course John as a member of the Beatles.

There are some great colour and black and white photos throughout, some of which I’d not seen before – like this one of Yoko.

The photograph above is an interesting composition. As you look at it you realise those are John’s hands.

Articles by the likes of Jonathan Cott, Jann S. Wenner, and Chet Flippo; photos by Annie Leibovitz; and a section just called “Remembering John” – with contributions from Gerry Marsden, Ray Charles, Joan Baez, Jim Keltner, David Geffen, Bobby Keyes, Carly Simon Norman Mailer, Chuck Berry, Mick Jagger and Harry Nilsson – to name just a few. It is going to be a very interesting read.

Beatles Collecting – The Nice Things People Do

Posted on April 14, 2013 by beatlesblogger

Sometimes you don’t go looking for Beatle records. Sometimes, Beatle records come looking for you. That was my experience about three weeks ago when an old friend asked me if I was still interested in collecting the Beatles because she had a couple of records and would I like them?

Well, yes of course I would! Always open to donations. She dropped them in a couple of days later, and you’d have to say it’s a mixed bag of goodies….

The first one wasn’t even the Beatles. It was Wings. Well, not even Wings really, just an obscure band called P.K. and the Sound Explosion doing covers of Wings:

I think there are only two saving graces about this one. One is the daggy cover design featuring a (poorly) stylised version of the official Wings logo of the time. This is what the real thing looks like:

The other saving grace is that this copy is still sealed in protective plastic and is in mint condition. This is a US copy that came out on the Pickwick Records budget label back in 1977. It is so bad, it’s good! (P.K. and his group have also done a Disco Christmas LP, the Beach Boys Songbook, a Paul Williams Songbook, and the Bee Gees Songbook).

Next came three of the real thing, some it has to be said in better shape than others. For instance this very well-used example of the Australian-only cover of Beatles For Sale:

You’d have to say this is a copy that has had a good life. I’m not sure about you, but it has so much patina of age that I’m tempted to keep it just because it looks so pre-loved and lived-in. There was one other intriguing thing. When I took out the vinyl it’s the mono pressing, but not the Australian version. Here’s what I got:

This is what it should look like:

Clearly the original Aussie pressing has been played to death and someone, over the course of the long history of this particular copy of the album, has sought out another to replace it – that being the UK mono we see above….

There was another Australia-only cover in the four records my friend donated. It’s the 1972 release The Essential Beatles on the Apple label. This is a “best of” compilation and as its catalogue number suggests (TVSS 8), it was associated with a TV advertising campaign by EMI in Australia:

This copy of The Essential Beatles has a well-used cover but the vinyl inside is actually in pretty good shape.

Finally a double LP of the soundtrack to the documentary movie Imagine John Lennon:

This is a gatefold album of twenty-one Beatles and Lennon songs. It is in what I would describe as good (G) to very good (VG) condition. The Internet Movie Database says of the film: This “biography” evolves around the nearly 240 hours of film and videotape fortuitously taken by Lennon of his life. The archive footage is transformed into a fascinating life story of one of the most complex and fascinating men of the modern music era….Includes some very personal and insightful footage, never before made available to the public.

The gatefold has some nice photos:

This is the Australian pressing, on the black and silver Parlophone label:

So, some varied, interesting and unusual donations from a friend. Sometimes you don’t have to go looking too far. Beatle records just come to you.

Beatles Blog

Adventures in collecting Beatles music

Tag Archives: John Lennon

Paul McCartney – In His Own Words

Never-Before-Seen Photos of the Beatles

Two Garage Sale Books

The Beatles – The Uncut Ultimate Music Guide

The Ballad of John and Yoko – By the Editors of Rolling Stone

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: