A Beatle related drawing a week for a year... That's
how I started this blog. If you are looking for my Beatle related posts, check the buttons below from February 9th 2010 through
February 9th, 2011. Now I just draw what I feel. Check out my upcoming book, Amglish, coming from Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers on October 16th. Here's our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Amglish-in-Like-Ten-Easy-Lessons-a-Celebration-of-the-New-World-Lingo/112425802177825
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Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Down the rabbit hole in Weybridge... | It’s an hour & 23 minutes from Oxford to Weybridge (according to Google maps), and
it’s one hundred years between the publication of Alice in Wonderland and John Lennon’s tenancy
at Kenwood, the mock tudor residence he shared with his wife Cynthia and son Julian. Last week a story
broke which said that “...builders working at the estate, where Lennon lived between 1964 and
1968, have made an amazing and potentially decisive discovery while digging up the lawn. They are reported
to have found a leather holdall containing several large, broken glass bottles, plus one that has not smashed.
...."The bottle that has been discovered intact is the only remaining one, and luckily I will look after that
one safely now given the provenance... a leather bag with two clasp handles seems to have been what these items
were buried in. The bag has almost completely rotted away," explained the builder.
This story
suggested the attached illustration, in which the Wizard of Weybridge is briefly reunited with his boyhood
pal, Alice. No sign of the Carpenter or the Walrus at this writing. Apologies, of course, to Sir John
Tenniel! |
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Back to the drudgery!;-)I’ve been drawing a whole lot of the very early Beatles. They are so
hungry and energetic then, before they were packaged for our consumption. Today, I’m revisiting the Let It Be/ Get
Back Sessions. It’s telling that both versions of these sessions were named for Paul songs, as Paul was “cheerleader
in chief” trying to hold it together in the absence of Brian Epstein. They had also left George Martin behind, in
an effort to get a more real sound that felt “less produced”. I’ve listened to quite a bit of the Nagra
raw tapes from these sessions, and there’s one where Paul tries to be cheeky in an upbeat fashion and says “Alright,
back to the drudgery!” .
John cuts back at him with: “It’s you who’s making it like this!”,
apparently not in the mood to be a lovable fab at the moment. ;-)
One thing that seems clear from the source
photos: they were all convinced that shampoo was a bourgeois value best avoided...;-)
I decided to frame all four
caricatures like the album cover. I did not want any of them to look too happy, because they weren’t. Oddly, John
does look closest to happy, even if he was the least happy guy in the band.
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Monday, April 12, 2010
The Brothers LennonI realized the Julian Lennon’s birthday was last week, and in googling him, I came across some nice recent shots
of him with his half brother Sean at some recent event. Sean’s birthday is October 9th, and that week is already taken.
;-)
So here’s these two sons of John Lennon, both practioners of Dad’s art form. Julian has had more
chart success, but I’ve also liked a few of Sean’s songs, like "Tomorrow", to name one.
When
I see either one, I see echoes of John Lennon in their faces. But seeing them together, they look like they are “hitting
different notes” entirely of that likeness. As a caricaturist, one thing I like to do when drawing doubles is exaggerate
the differences between them-- that is, if he’s got a square face & his is longer, I push both in the direction
of difference. So I went for a bit of that here, as well. 
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Mach Schau! Tom Waits warns : “you’ll be lost and never found/ you can never turn around, don’t go down to Fannin
St.”. And yet, I’m still stuck inside of Hamburg, with the Beat Brothers blues again! ;-) I find this era
fascinating-- it’s before their appearance and comportment was managed much at all.
In April of 1961, The
Beatles left for their second stint in Hamburg. During this April 1st through July 1st run, they would play “ a staggering
503 hours on stage over 92 nights” (according to Lewisohn). This feat would have been impossible without their reliance
on over the counter dexedrine, or “prellies” as they came to call them.
They would also get their
first studio time, as backing band for Tony Sheridan. This would lead in the year ahead to a local kid wandering into the
NEMS record shop in Liverpool and asking Mr. Brian Epstein for a copy of “My Bonnie” the single by “Tony
Sheridan and the Beat Brothers”.
George got famously deported for being underage- a tender 17 when he first
arrived the year before. I’m not sure when he was wearing this rockabilly ‘do, but the source photo is from the
Anthology, and likely another great Astrid shot. I took his features, however, from the Anthology interview where George gives
the cleaned up version of the band refining their chops in the Reeperbahn: “That’s where we developed
our style, found our style. This fella (club owner Bruno Koschmider) he used to say ‘You’ve got to make a show
for the people’. He used to come up every night yelling, ‘Mach Schau!’ “
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