Tag Archives: Klaus Voormann

Klaus Voormann – A Sidesman’s Journey

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One of the great artists and session men and part of the inner-circle of the Beatles for many years is Klaus Voormann.

He’s been a long-time friend and sometime collaborator and he has an album out looking back and celebrating that association with the group. I stumbled across this video which pretty much tells the back story to the making of the record, which is called “A Sidesman’s Journey”:

As you can see “A Sideman’s Journey” features guest appearances by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, as well as Beatle-related songs like George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” – here sung by Yusef Islam (Cat Stevens).

Voormann has known the Beatles since the Hamburg days and is an artist and bass player. For example, he drew the legendary cover for “Revolver”:

The Beatles - Revolver (1966)

Later Voormann also played bass on numerous Beatles solo projects including, amongst many others,  Lennon’s “Walls and Bridges” and “Imagine”, Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” and “Concert for Bangladesh”, and on the Ringo solo outings “Ringo” and “Goodnight Vienna”.  He was a founding member of the Plastic Ono Band.  See his biog entry in Wikipedia here.

Voormann’s new CD is made up of newly-recorded covers of some of the songs he helped make famous with the former Beatles plus many other artists over the years.

Well worth a listen.

Composing Outside the Beatles – DVD

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Despite the somewhat literal and unimaginative title, this recent release is a really a very interesting documentary study of John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s careers immediately following the break-up of the Beatles.

I’d read about this DVD by chance and had been looking around on Ebay for a copy. I dropped in to my favourite shop – Red Eye Records – and there it was on the shelf for a reasonable price. Well, reasonable compared to the prices I’d seen for British or US copies on Ebay, plus postage, plus the uncertainty of “will it ever arrive?”….a bird in the bush as they say.

So, I got it at Red Eye, and watched it last weekend – which was a wet weekend and perfect for being a couch potato and settling in in front of the TV for a couple of hours.

Nicely put together, it traces the first few years of Lennon and McCartney trying to make their ways as solo entities outside the protective shell that used to be the Beatles. It compares them as composers and performers, examining their early singles and album releases. There is much more time and effort during the documentary placed on John Lennon’s output than that of Paul – but this is probably because the overall theory of the documentary is that Lennon was by far doing more serious and worthy work, and being more commercially successful than his former band-mate and co-writer.

There are nice shots of original album covers and single releases as the discussion panel (which includes Klaus Voorman, Paul Gambaccini, drummers Alan White and Denny Seiwell, and writers Johnny Rogan, John Blaney and Steve Turner amongst others) commenting on and appraising the relative strengths and weaknesses of each solo release between 1967 and 1972.

The front cover of "Composing Outside the Beatles"

The packaging of the DVD is impressive. It’s in the digi-pack style with opening “pages” revealing the DVD disc inside. It is glossy and has good production values with great photos and printed information.

The DVD cover open to the first of the tri-folds

Its a tri-fold digi-pack that finally opens out like this:

The tri-fold inner fully open

As you can see they have really taken some care with the presentation, including printing the DVD disc itself so that it matches the printing of the inner cover exactly. Here’s the rear cover:

The rear cover of "Composing Outside the Beatles"

So, “Composing Outside the Beatles” really has a strong slant towards John – both in the comments by the interviewees and the ratio of time spent on each. But maybe this is just a reflection on the times where Paul was struggling to be a musician outside the Beatles while John appeared to leap into it with a bit more style (as well as critical and commercial success). If you are interested there’s a further review here.

Harry Nilsson’s “Son of Dracula” – US Vinyl

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No trip to Newcastle (the one in Australia on the New South Wales north coast) can go without a visit to one of my favourite second-hand record store haunts – Antique Sounds on King Street.  Its a tiny little shop that is literally chock full with a wide range of second-hand items – from clocks, to clothing, bakelite radios, trinkets, toys….you name it and its probably there.

Up the back of the shop are racks and racks of old vinyl and amongst them many Beatles and Beatles-related collectables. To be perfectly honest most of these are not in the best condition or what you might call at the high-grade end of the collectable spectrum. And for the condition that some of the items are in the owner is usually asking an inflated price.  But, the thing about this store is that you just never know what you might find.

The other day I had to pass through Newcastle briefly and so dropped in.

While there I discovered a nice clean copy of an interesting Beatles-related 12-inch vinyl disc I have had on my “should get” list for some time: Harry Nilsson’s “Son of Dracula”, which is the soundtrack to the Apple film of the same name.

Way back in 1974 Apple Corps, the Beatles’ company, was still operating its soon to be defunct Apple Film division. When they first set up Apple the Beatles always envisioned a film arm and, while not prolific, some films they made include the well-known “The Concert for Bangladesh” and the lesser known “Born to Boogie”, a concert film featuring T-Rex and Marc Bolan – directed by Ringo Starr.

Well ahead of the present-day fascination with vampires,  “Son of Dracula” was billed as “the first rock-n-roll Dracula movie musical”.  It starred Nilsson, Ringo Starr, Peter Frampton, John Bonham and Keith Moon….

A film poster from the 1974 Apple film "Son of Dracula"

Apparently it wasn’t much of a film – but the soundtrack and songs provided by Harry Nilsson (still relatively fresh and marketable from his huge, world-wide hit album “Nilsson Schmilsson”) along with contributions from legendary orchestrator Paul Buckmaster, had some really great songs – all largely taken from the LP’s “Nilsson Schmilsson” and its follow-up “Son of Schmilsson”).

I already had the Australian release of this record – which came out here with a very plain, single sleeve cover, and on the standard orange-coloured RCA record label. However, the original US pressings were released with a unique cover, complete with opening bat wings (see pics below):

Front cover - "Son of Dracula" US pressing

The "bat wings" gate-fold cover

Cover with the "bat wings" open

“Son of Dracula” is also interesting to Beatles collectors because it was on something of a unique hybrid label called Rapple Records. There isn’t a lot of detail about this but I can only assume that as Nilsson was contracted to RCA at the time, and this was an Apple film, they decided to combine RCA and Apple and came up with the name Rapple! Its the only time this label was ever used to my knowledge. I like it because they also created a custom record label for the project, complete with a half-eaten apple….perhaps a sign of things to come as the company slowly self-destructed:

The very unusual "Rapple" label

So, another junk shop treasure to add to the collection: an original US pressing (in great condition) of 1974’s “Son of Dracula” – on the intriguing Rapple Records.

Harry Nilsson’s own site has some further reading and pictures from the project if you are interested.

(By the way, the record cost me $8.00 Australian).

New Releases – Coming Up or Out Now

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Time to detail a couple of new releases expected very soon…some definite, some pure speculation, and one that’s already out.

Paul McCartney this month will release a new CD and vinyl in a variety of editions.

It’s called “Good Evening New York City” and is a live set recorded at the newly-opened CitiField venue in New York on July 17, 18 and 21 this year. The concert was symbolic because CitiField is built on the site of the famous Shea Stadium where the Beatles played way back in 1965.

“Good Evening New York City” will be available in three formats:  a 3-disc (2 CD + 1 DVD) standard edition and a 4-disc (2 CD + 2 DVD) deluxe version featuring expanded packaging and a bonus DVD including McCartney’s July 15 live street performance on the David Letterman Late Show. The set will also be released on vinyl LP. Collectors get ready to dig deep into those pockets again…

It comes out 17 November (US) and 23 November (UK).

You can see a very short teaser for the album on Paul’s official YouTube site. And here is a cover image:

Good Evening New York City

Good Evening New York City

Another release that’s supposedly pending is a special 40th Anniversary box set vinyl edition of the Beatles “Abbey Road”.  No one is sure if this is to be the newly remastered version of the disc or the previous mix. You can find out a bit more here, and the Record Store Day site says that the box set will include the vinyl album, a t-shirt, and a poster. The limited edition deluxe package will, according to them, be released on November 7th in the US and will be limited to 5000 copies worldwide. Intriguingly, Amazon has a holding place for the record here.  Someone has produced this cover image, so I’m not sure if this release is really happening or not:

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Abbey Road 40th Anniversary Deluxe Box Set?

Speaking of vinyl, rumors persist that there is to be a full box set of ALL the Beatles Remastered albums made available in Mono and Stereo on vinyl.  The respected Mojo magazine carried this article on its website yesterday saying that the box sets are on the way, but there are no firm release dates just yet. Watch this space….

And finally Beatles’ long-time friend and sometime collaborator Klaus Voormann has a new album out now. Its called “A Sideman’s Journey”, and features appearances by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.  Voormann has known the Beatles since the Hamburg days and is an artist and bass player. He drew the cover of “Revolver”, and has played on numerous tracks for Beatles solo projects (including, amongst many others,  Lennon’s “Walls and Bridges” and “Imagine” and Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” and “Concert for Bangladesh”). See his biog entry in Wikipedia here.

His new CD is made up of newly recorded covers of some of the songs he helped make famous with the Beatles and others over the years.