ABBA - The Beatles.

I'm sorry but I'm going to write about The Beatles again; this time comparing them to ABBA.

Now there was a time when I wouldn't have dreamt about mentioning the two groups in the same breath and I think that is a generational thing. People of my generation usually compare The Beatles with The Rolling Stones but I have never really been much of a Rolling Stones fan.

In the 60s I saw them on stage twice; once at my local dance hall and even ventured in to their dressing room where we had a long chat with Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts.

Over the years, I liked a few of their tracks – It's All Over Now, Get Off My Cloud etc – and I even worked with Mick Jagger's brother, Chris, in a film called Lifeforce for a few months so I don't think I am that qualified to compare the two groups as I would be biased.

I am (nearly) the same age as The Beatles so my experience of them is first hand. I know what it was like before they came along. I remember the very snobby days before their arrival and I remember Buddy Holly being on the Ed Sullivan Show (which I didn't see 'live', of course) and this great, great guitarist and brilliant song writer, this inspiration for the Beatles and loads and loads of major pop artists, was asked by Ed Sullivan (yes a relation, apparently) if he (Buddy) was still at school as if he would go on to something else, more worthwhile after he had sewed his wild oats with his “banjo” plinkety plonk thing. Buddy Holly in his tuxedo standing there in New York City being asked questions by a talentless vacuum cleaner in a suit.

The Beatles appeared on that show in their suits too but it changed eventually.

Before The Beatles politicians in the UK would address journalists by their surname as if they were squaddies in the army but then the silent revolutions came with interviewers like Robin Day who asked all the awkward questions that WE wanted to know the answers to.

I wrote on here before about how I found the first LP – Please Please Me! - the climax to the phenomenon known as The Beatles. After that, in my opinion, they became more of a commodity and certain elements in the group pursued that or rejected it.

I think Lennon veered away from it first, McCartney kind of loved it and wanted to be a pop star; George probably saw the writing on the wall with the astronomical success of the Lennon/McCartney song writing partnership in that his own musical aspirations would have to take a back seat and Ringo carried on playing the drums.

I'm not going in to the silly argument as to Ringo's drumming ability but suffice it to say he played drums on Lennon's later albums and to settle things listen to his drumming on Day in the Life as opposed to McCartney's drumming on The Ballad of John and Yoko.

Over the years since then I have had stars in my eyes with regards to The Beatles; to me they did no wrong. I was on the John Lennon side of things and as the years progressed I drifted further and further away from Paul McCartney and sometimes even looking back at the young John Lennon (he was only ever young) issuing naïve statements about peace and praising Yoko's singing to the heavens I found him, sometimes, cringingly embarrassing.

Somebody once asked me what things might have been like if John Lennon had survived; I answered that for his reputation he was better off dead as we don't know where he would have drifted but I would like to think he would have just settled down and not been an embarrassment like Paul McCartney – no matter what he achieved in the past.

I think the same of Buddy Holly, James Dean and all the other good looking corpses along the way.

So to compare ABBA to The Beatles!!!

How can I?

I played some Beatles tracks recently and, of course, there is always the mood and the moment and I also played some ABBA tracks.

I got a bit fed up of We Can Work It Out and other Beatle tracks but when I played some ABBA songs – on another day, I have to say – I found them very interesting.

Back in their day, I didn't really like them much but my daughter owned the albums, knew the lyrics and played them all the time; so when I saw the stage musical Mama Mia my eyes were opened.

The stage version was very operatic – the singers had very powerful voices, even though they were 'miked' - and the chord sequences together with the naïve lyrics made a very pleasing sound to my ear.

So what's my verdict?

You can't beat I Am the Walrus, can you? Or I Want to Hold Your Hand and Hello Goodbye but if I hear Hey Jude again I'll scream!!!!

Roger Bannister and the missing pages.

This may seem familiar to you but it should become clear. I wrote it as a post about heroes and Memorial Day in America but I just stole some of it from that post, maybe corrected (edited it) added some more thoughts and then got to the reason I used it again – see what you think:

Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile barrier in May 1954; I was a little boy watching my friend nearly drown at Moseley Road Swimming Baths and finding out that another friend had died by drowning in one of Birmingham's infamous canals.

I lost a lot of time at school as I suffered from conjunctivitis which developed into ulcers; I remember seeing the horrible white things on the blue of my eyes and I was told that this was because I rubbed them so much but I couldn't help it; the pain and the itching added to my problems facing the light and water would consistently run from my eyes.

That was really the end of my education as I failed the eleven plus - but that's only an excuse as I can clearly remember sitting the examination and looking out of the high windows at school and handing in a blank sheet of paper.

One day the news came on the TV, reporting the first sub 4 minute mile; the race came on and there were only 3 runners in the race that we could see; the other 3 were invisible.

Christopher Brasher was ahead with Bannister just behind, up to about half a mile, and then Chris Chataway took the lead with Bannister close by up to half way around the final lap and then on the final lap Bannister took the lead and made history; to a ten year old boy this was like an orgasm.

Later in the year was the 'Bannister/Landy Miracle mile' and that was the best mile race I have ever seen – do yourself a favour and look for both races on YouTube.

 

John Landy of New Zealand had broken the world record for the mile and then the two of them met in the Empire Games. Have a look - it will bring a tear to your eye and a lump to your throat.

Because of my eye trouble, I had to go a place called Burcot Grange; this was, and still is, a very large house in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. It is a Victorian building and was donated to the Birmingham Eye Hospital by its owners to give prolonged treatment to children suffering from inflammatory conditions of the eye associated with the 'harsh city life.'

It was also a place where squint operations were performed and a lot of the other children had eyes removed because of inoperable eye injuries. Some of those children would take the patch from their removed eye socket and look in to a looking glass for their lost eye. 

 

One said to me that he could clearly see his missing eye 'in the corner' he said 'can you see it?' - of course I couldn't but I said I could. He had been the victim of a stray dart thrown at him in the vicinity of the renowned Birmingham inner city monstrosity called Saint Martin's Flats.

It was at Burcot Grange that I was introduced to elevenses which was a snack at eleven-o-clock; maybe a biscuit and some orange cordial.

It was like being let loose as there were 5 acres of open grounds; we played cowboys and Indians with real hills, real valleys and real big bushes to hide behind.

The other thing I did was run; I ran and ran every day just like Tom Courtney in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner; I was going to be a Roger Bannister and I ran around those acres every day.

My mother came to see me every week, with a tear in her eye, and encouraging one in my own infected ones; I cried when she left and then forgot about her for a while when I ran.

One of the nurses was my girl friend; she was nurse Hollingshead and maybe 15 years older than me. She was very kind and wrote to the little boy that was me for quite some time after I left; I was presented with a book by Enid Blyton called, Round the Year. It was a nature book and they wrote in the inside cover to Christopher with lots of love from Burcot Grange. I still have the book which is at my daughter's in Suffolk.

As we sat there in the sun the nurses would 'time' me as I ran around the grounds. I could complete the course in about three minutes; one day one of the nurses, who had timed me, called another nurse and said 'Hey! Is it the four minute mile or the four mile minute.'

I can just imagine the four mile minute!! - 240 mph!!!!

When I eventually returned home I would run around the block and I managed to get a sucker to beat every day. His name was Roger and he looked more like Roger Bannister than I did; I would let him run ahead of me so I could run passed him along the back straight which ended just by the lane where we lived at South View Terrace on Moseley Road.

We would do the Bannister/Landy race which meant he had to look over his shoulder as I overtook him round the other shoulder; when I approached each day I would shout 'now' to make him look one way as I overtook him. Each day the race would take twenty minutes as I would time it from the public clock outside Clements the chemists; maybe more than a mile, I reckon.

That's why Roger Bannister has always been my hero; he ran for many years after that to keep fit although he retired from competitive racing early after the 'Golden Mile' to continue his studies as a doctor; he worked at Northwick Park Hospital as a neurologist and later as Director of the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in London and a trustee-delegate of St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in Paddington.

A few years ago I bought his book called The Four Minute Mile, of course, and just as I was coming up to the Golden mile on page 224 I found the page was blank. The next page was there and from there till the end of the book many pages were missing.

I called Amazon, where I had bought it, and they referred me to the publishers, The Lyons Press, and when I called them they hung up on me.

A few years ago, I wrote an article about Harold Pinter, which was published by the magazine The Oldie and since then they have sent monthly invitations to their Literary Lunches. When I came back from America I decided to go to some of them and this month one of the guest speakers was none other than Roger Bannister.

I sorted my Bannister book out, the one with the missing pages, and arrived at Simpson's in The Strand with ample time before the lunch.

 

Sir Roger, for that is what he is now, sat behind a table and I was the first one to take a copy of his new book for him to sign. I asked him to make it out to 'Chris' – which he did – and then I told him that I used to play 'Roger Bannister'- “You played me?” he said, as if I'd played him as an actor and I said “No. I would run around our block pretending to be you.”

“When I first started” he said “I would run around the streets and people would shout at me 'Who do you think you are, Sydney Wooderson?' Later, many years after I had retired from running they'd shout 'Who do you think you are, Roger Bannister?”

We both laughed and I found him very tactile, tapping my hand and laughing – then I showed him the book with the missing pages - “I couldn't help that” he said “must have been published by the Australians.”

He signed my book in the missing pages saying 'sorry about this' and when he got up to speak, later, he paid tribute to his wife to whom he had been married for 60 years; he said she didn't know anything about sport, before he met her, and thought he had run four miles in a minute!!

Scotland.

Here's a map of the British Isles with the 'none UK' bits in green. Note how tiny the so called Northern Ireland is and that some of Southern Ireland is further north than Northern Ireland.

I'm not sure if the rest of the world know that Scotland are going to the polls in September to vote for independence. It is a yes/no vote and I really wonder whether they will succeed in breaking away from the rest of the United Kingdom; they have been part of the UK since about 1707 and I also wonder what the political party UKIP will call themselves. They are a kind of British 'Tea Party' with nationalistic, jingoistic, anti-immigrant and other right wing loony policies and UKIP stands for the United Kingdom Independence Party.

The other thing on the line is that if Scotland do break away will they be able to retain use of the pound (£) sterling? The three main parties in Britain don't want Scotland to have the pound – or the BBC or any other British stuff – but I have to ask myself if three individuals have the right to tell anybody within the union whether they can have the pound or not! The three are the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his two shadows. If this was in America there would be a constitutional argument but as there is no constitution in Britain where is the rule book?

What's that I hear you say? Britain? Yes that's part of the title – The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Will it still be the United Kingdom with just England, Wales and Northern Ireland as members? Will the UK be weakened by the separation? How strong will Scotland be?

I do know one thing and that is if Ireland had an all Ireland football team – both the Republic and the North – they would be stronger than they are now with the two teams. This shows with the strong rugby team which is made up of the north and south. 

You can also say that about a British football team – England/Wales/Scotland/Northern Ireland – but then we wouldn't have the rivalry between the various nations; which is healthy.

Of course we could take it further or even farther and have a European Football team but who would we play? South America? Asia?

There are already two continents who play – the USA and Australia – and whilst they may come to something one day it won't be for a while.

So what will happen if they do gain independence? - Scotland, I mean - Will they build a wall? Will they have an immigration post on every road like they do on the Continent?

The trouble is this is an island and the people who live here are not used to borders like they have elsewhere. People go from England into Wales and Scotland without even noticing it so that will be a difference.

When Scottish, Welsh and Irish people go to America the Americans call them English because they can't quite hear the difference. The Welsh and Scots don't like that, and who can blame them, in fact if you correct them they say 'it's all the same.'

Well it isn't is it?

People over here can't tell the difference between the American and Canadian accents – but is there a Canadian accent or is it just a posh American one with the addition of eh, for sure, and the pronunciation of about as aboat?

There is a certain Scottishness to the Canadian accent and I met a guy in Los Angeles who I would have sworn came from one of the northern Irish counties and he was from Niagra – on the Canadian side.

But I digress – as usual, so what about (aboat) the poand (sic) ? And what about UKIP?