The Beatles collection

We’ve been putting off posting our Beatles collection because – well, it’s not as if they need more publicity, is it?

But then along comes film director Peter Jackson and he sifts through 60 hours of footage and 150 hours of audio from January 1969 to come up with the 8-hour fly-on-the-wall documentary Get Back.

So, people are talking about The Beatles even more than usual.

And, despite being about three hours too long, there are gems in Get Back, especially the camaraderie as songs evolve.

Here at Stereo Stories we have 20 Beatles stories, three of which have been performed in our concerts: Here Comes The Sun (Carmel Bird), Help! (Aimee Chan) and We Can Work It Out (Brian Nankervis).

Plus, Liz Bennett recalls hearing Golden Slumbers sung in language in the desert.
As Golden Slumbers shifts between languages I think of George Harrison, dying of cancer in a Hollywood mansion, and John Lennon, stepping out the front door of the Dakota building to his doom. I wonder what they would make of this moment.

Maria Majsa, as ever, cuts to the family bone in recalling Penny Lane.
There is a radio in a brown leather case on the bench. My mother turns it on during the day when my father has left for work and the house feels different.

Eric Roe quits religion after hearing When We Was Fab.
I’d been trained to find evil in the most innocuous-seeming detail. When it came to music, nothing non-Christian was ever innocent.

And Martin Hadfield takes a jaunty song a little too literally.
Each time it was played a surging panic set in. How long did I have left before my bald, elderly, and poor parents required feeding? And how could they possibly go out until a quarter to three in the morning if they were in that condition? I’d be worried sick.