Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Composer, musician and ex-Beatle, best known as a member of the Beatles.
On the island
Eight records
To me that sort of takes me back to when I was first buying records. Up until that point it had been sort of Billy Cotton and Swing and Bebop and stuff, but suddenly rock and roll kind of burst on the scene. And Elvis was one of the first people that kind of really made me take an interest.
On most of the records I'm picking today, I could have chosen. Other records from these people's repertoires ... But I've chosen one that sort of sums them up. So with with Chuck Berry, I've just chosen Sweet Little Sixteen'cause it sort of sums him up for me.
Now my preference would always be for rock and roll, but I do like a lot of classical music. I don't know much about it, but I you know, I like the great tunes and classical music and stuff. So to sum it all up, this is probably the the favorite record that I would take. It's just there's just something special about it. I've loved it for years.
which was the first record I ever bought, so it's a sort of special record for me. He sang it in a film called The Girl Can't Help It, and uh it was always a big favorite of mine.
Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)Favourite
I haven't chosen any Beatle records, but if we'd had more than eight, I probably would have. I haven't chosen any of my records. So to sort of sum up the whole thing, I've chosen one off John Lennon's record Double Fantasy, uh which I think's a beautiful song. Uh it's very moving to me.
now this is one we used to do at the cavern with the Beatles and uh we used to have little groups of fans who used to give themselves little names. ... And there was two girls called Chris and Val. And they used to sing say Sing Searchin' Paul, Sing Searchin. ... So we always used to do this one, it used to be a big request and uh it was a big favourite with the group.
again I've chosen just one to sum him up. But there are millions of his stuff. I like a lot of stuff that he does, and he he's a friend of mine from the Hamburg days, little Richard.
Walking in the Park with Eloise
this one is a song that was written by my dad. He only ever wrote one song, to my knowledge. ... I've recorded it with some friends of mine in uh Nashville and the friends were Chet Atkins, who I happened to be working with, and Chet brought along Floyd Kramer. and uh I had the drummer from a group at the time, Jeff Britton, and we got together and uh we made a little recording of this, especially to play my dad, you know.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:47How well could you endure loneliness?
I don't really know. When I was a kid I never used to mind it too much. Since then I haven't actually been very lonely, so I haven't kinda tested it lately. But uh I never used to mind it too much.
Presenter asks
1:13Can you think of one thing you'd be particularly happy to have got away from?
Yes, I would say probably people snatching photographs when I don't want to be photographed is probably the the one thing I would be glad to get away with.
Presenter asks
3:54Was your father trained or did he play by ear?
No, he played by ear. ... I think he's a great pianist. I mean, he wasn't technically good, but he's a He used to tell me, you know, the the old thing of like if you go to a party, it's handy to be able to play a piano because then you get all the drinks brought for you and you're the life and soul of the party, you know.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
Linda McCartney
I plumped for a book that my wife's put out, she's called Linda's Pictures, because that's got pictures of my kids in it, and it's got a lot of stuff of Linda's.
The luxury
that's the kind of thing I can spend hours and engross myself with and write songs.
To what extent were you and John Lennon working seriously at composing and arranging?
Yes, we had. Really in very early days of the Beatles, John and I used to take time off school. and go home to my house sagging off as we used to call it. ... And we used to sit around being very artsy and sort of think of ourselves as Dylan Thomas or someone, you know. And we started writing together then.
Presenter asks
16:23How did you work [together on songwriting]?
Yes, well it it used to happen every way, every possible permutation really. We never got a formula. It's probably one of the good things about it. We used to just sit down with two guitars. And if neither of us had an idea, we'd just start to look for one with guitars and just start strumming and wait till one came out. Or quite often one of us would have thought of a first line or a second line or a chorus or something, and he'd start off On that or I'd start in it.
Presenter asks
20:59Do you remember [the height of Beatlemania] as a physically frightening time?
No, not at all. No. I think the physically frightening thing is projected by the media. ... They they just naturally take the sensational things that happen and play them up. ... I was never really frightened at all. I mean even when we were getting uh death threats and stuff on American tours, we used to just take it with a pinch of salt.
“I worked out that I couldn't sing and play trumpet. ... So I I thought, well, I've got to do something about this, so I swapped the trumpet for a guitar, which I've still got the guitar. ... And then I took it home and I couldn't play it at all, couldn't even begin to play it, and then I worked out it was'cause I was left handed and the guitar wasn't.”
“I knew the words to Eddie Cochrane's Twenty Flight Rock. That meant I was in. That that was me.”
“I think eventually, um, we all sort of found girls and split off. ... I suppose it was just an inevitable part of growing up really, that uh they happened.”