DON'T SAY THAT THIS IS THE END

Early US Teen Idols and the Beatles by Spencer Leigh

This is the final chapter from "Baby, That Is Rock And Roll - American Pop, 1954-1963" (Finbarr International, 2001), which can be ordered through the Books page. I’ve reprinted the chapter as it is. I don’t know anyone else who does it, but I like the idea of numbering the direct quotes and then writing about the speakers at the back of the book, but I realise that the chapter might be a little confusing out of context. In other words, buy the book! (Spencer Leigh)

Rock’n’roll is American music and in the early 60s, the UK acts could only make an impression in the home market. Cover versions of US hits often did better than the American originals because the Billy Furys and Marty Wildes were available for TV performances and very little footage of the Americans was screened here. Indeed, as the TV companies never showed Ricky Nelson’s family series, and as he never appeared in a rock’n’roll film and didn’t visit the UK, I never saw Ricky Nelson sing any of his hits until the 1970s.

The UK acts made very little impression in America. Even when singing original songs, Cliff Richard only made the US Top 40 once, while the Shadows lost out to the Danish Jorgen Ingmann on “Apache”. The Tornadoes had a freak US No.l with “Telstar”, although, admittedly, it was a fine record. Ridiculously, the Tornadoes didn’t tour the US because they were backing Billy Fury and his manager, Larry Parnes, refused to allow the Tornadoes to go to America without him. It could have been more embarrassing for Billy if they had gone together. There was no logic to the occasional British record that made the US charts - Frankie Vaughan’s “Judy” or Cyril Stapleton’s “Nick Nack Paddy Wack”.
Geographically, the US dwarfs the UK and it contains four times as many people, four times as many record-buyers. However, with a population of 50 million English-speaking people, it was only a matter of time before a major international act would emerge from the UK. The way it happened could never have been predicted. Marvin Rainwater (738): “I was headlining a show in Liverpool and I found out later that the Beatles were on the same bill. It sure shocked me. I was stupid for not bringing them into my dressing-room and talking to them.”

On the strength of “Hey! Baby”, Bruce Channel (739) did club dates in the UK with his harmonica player, Delbert McClinton. They played the Tower Ballroom in New Brighton on 21 June 1962 with the Beatles in support. “I remember getting off the plane and my luggage was lost so I wore what I had on the plane that night in Maidstone. The tour is a blur after that, but I remember playing a big hall in Liverpool that reminded me of a castle. There were lots of kids there, a whole sea of people, and I said to Delbert, ‘They can’t all have come to see us’, and we soon found out that the Beatles were very popular there. Delbert was in the dressing-room with John Lennon who was very interested in his harp. Delbert played something for him and evidently John kept the idea and used it for the sound on ‘Love Me Do’. We had heard the harmonica on blues records by Jimmy Reed and people like that, and that influenced ‘Hey! Baby’. It’s a great thrill to know that our record influenced the Beatles, that our music was appreciated by someone of that stature.”
“Love Me Do” made the UK Top 20 at the end of 1962, and the following year belonged to the Beatles as they topped the charts with “Please Please Me”, “From Me To You”, “She Loves You” and “I Want To Hold Your Hand”. The Beatles didn’t make an impact in America until 1964 and so the visiting American stars coming to the UK in 1963 were witnessing a phenomenon that they knew nothing about.

Bobby Vee (740): “I was on tour with my producer Snuff Garrett in the North-West when someone played me ‘Love Me Do’. We loved it and thought it sounded like a Crickets’ record. Snuffy got very excited and wanted to buy the rights for America, but EMI wanted $25,000 for the rights which at the time was too much money. It seemed outrageous - RCA only paid $35,000 for Elvis and this was a new group. We could tell that they were going to be popular and I started to learn their tunes. I also wrote six or seven tunes such as ‘She’s Sorry’ in that fashion. It was done with the kindest of intentions, a proclamation that there was this new sound in England. It never entered my mind that I was ripping them off, although it may look like that now.”

Troy Shondell (741): “I had my own group and I wanted them to be named on the label. When I asked Liberty, they said, ‘No, groups don’t sell, we want you to remain a single artist. Don’t you worry about anything, son, we’ll take care of you.’ Famous last words.”

Brian Hyland (742): “I played in Liverpool when the Beatles had ‘Please Please Me’ out and I thought it sounded great. It was clear from listening to it that they sang and played their own instruments and were involved with the whole process of making the record. This contrasted with a lot of American performers who made records with session guys they didn’t know. I did an American tour with Bobby Vee in 1963 and I remember us sitting in the dressing-room on the opening night singing ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘Please Please Me’ together. The others on the tour were amazed. They’d never heard the songs before and they thought they were great.”

The Beatles’ first national tour was with Helen Shapiro and Danny Williams in February 1963. The following month they did two weeks with Tommy Roe and Chris Montez. Chris Montez (743): “I was touring England with Tommy Roe and an unknown group called the Beatles. They were booked to get the show going and they had such energy and power. They played me their album, ‘Please Please Me’, before it was released and I was knocked out. I couldn’t stop singing ‘I Saw Her Standing There’. It was such a great song. I was top of the charts and topping the bill, but when we got to Liverpool, I said, ‘This is your town, you close the show, I’m not the headliner here.’ They were amazed that I should say that.”

Tommy Roe (744): “I am very proud to be a part of the history of the Beatles and my memories of our tour are all great. They were getting hot in England and it was tough following them. In fact, we turned the whole thing around and they ended up closing the show. I was so impressed that I started doing their songs and tried to get them a record deal in the States. My record company turned them down and I think now that they should have seen them. Their records weren’t too impressive in the beginning - they were doing 50s music - and you really had to see the image alongside the music. Once the Beatles started getting publicity in America, it was bound to happen. I was so influenced by what I heard in this country that I wrote ‘Everybody’ on the way home. I tried to get that same sound. We recorded in Muscle Shoals and it was a big record.”

Chris Montez (745) changed the Ritchie Valens song, ‘In A Turkish Town’ to ‘In An English Town’. “Yes, I had such a wonderful time when I came over here that I thought I would sing about an English town and an English girl. I had a coat with a round collar and a belt that was made in England but bought in America. People wanted to buy the jacket from me, which used to amaze me. The Beatles took me to their tailor and he made a couple of suits for me. On the last day of the tour, they said, ‘We hope you don’t mind, but we’re having jackets made like yours.’ No problem, I was impressed.”

Pat Boone (746): “I was gathering songs from all around the world that I might record and I brought an English song home - (Sings) ‘If there’s anything that you want, If there’s anything I can do.’ I tried my best to get Randy Wood to let me record the song, but he said, ‘No, that’ll never be a hit’.”

Del Shannon (747) did record “From Me To You”, thus becoming the first person to take a Lennon and McCartney song into the US Top 100. Del was with the Beatles as part of “Swinging Sound 63” at the Royal Albert Hall in April. “‘From Me To You’ was a big hit here and I told John Lennon that I was going to do it. He said, ‘That’ll be all right’, but then, just as he was going on stage at the Royal Albert Hall, he turned to me and said, ‘Don’t do that.’ Brian Epstein had told him that he didn’t want any Americans covering their songs. The Beatles were going to invade America by themselves.” (I thought that Del’s 1965 hit, ‘Keep Searchin’’ owed something to the Mersey sound, but he disagreed: “That song is the same as ‘Runaway’ and that was before Merseybeat. I strum hard, double.”)

Three days later the Beatles were at the NME Pollwinners Concert at the Empire Pool, Wembley. John Stewart (748): “I was playing the London Palladium and the opening of the London Hilton with the Kingston Trio. We were big fans of the Springfields and we went to see them get an award at some big concert. The Most Promising New Band was the Beatles and they did ‘Twist And Shout’ and some of their own songs. Nick Reynolds and I both said, ‘That’s it. When this hits America, it’s over for us.’ Within a few months, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ had come out, they had done the Ed Sullivan show and we never had another Top 40 record.”

In May, the Beatles were touring with Roy Orbison. Duane Eddy (749): “I was supposed to tour with the Beatles in 1963 but my manager messed that up somehow and Roy Orbison went instead. That was one of the greatest things that ever happened to Roy. It rejuvenated his whole career and he had several more hit records. He always said that he was very thankful to me for not going on that tour.”

Roy Orbison (750) had no sooner arrived than he was confronted by Brian Epstein and John Lennon. “Brian said, ‘Who should close the show?’, and John said, ‘You’re getting all the money, so why don’t we close it?’ I don’t know whether that was true or not, whether I was getting that much more than they were. I certainly wasn’t getting that much - and the tour had sold out in one afternoon.”

On 26th May 1963, I caught the tour at the Liverpool Empire, where the Beatles topped the bill. I remember the cries for the Beatles as Orbison stepped out on stage. I wondered how he could cope with it, but he simply whispered, “A candy-coloured clown they call the Sandman” and he was away. The audience loved him and forgot the Beatles for thirty minutes. Roy Orbison (751): “I remember Paul and John grabbing me by my arms and not letting me go back to take my curtain call. The audience was yelling, ‘We want Roy, we want Roy,’ and there I was, being held captive by the Beatles who were saying, ‘Yankee, go home.’ We had a great time.”

Carl Perkins (752): “I went to England for the first time on tour with Chuck Berry. The Beatles held a party for me as they wanted to meet me and I certainly wanted to meet them. They were down to earth, super-talented, witty people. ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ was very big here and I thought, ‘Man, these cats are going to destroy America.’ The kids would love their music and their clothes with those spike-heeled boots. I said, ‘The only thing wrong is that you need haircuts’, and John said, ‘Oh no, we don’t do haircuts.’”

In November 1963, the Beatles were invited to appear on the Royal Variety Performance at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London. Buddy Greco (753) was also on the bill: “I was working the Americana Hotel in New York and Buddy Rich, bless his soul, was like my brother. We were dear friends and we would send telegrams to each other with stupid names on like Tom Mix or Joe Blow. I got a telegram requesting me to appear on the Royal Variety Performance and it was signed by Val Parnell. I thought it was Buddy Rich sending me a silly telegram, but it turned out to be true. When I got to rehearsals, there were thousands of people outside the Prince of Wales Theatre and I had no idea who they had come to see. I didn’t think it was me and I didn’t think it was Marlene Dietrich, who, incidentally, had a young piano player called Burt Bacharach. The young men were walking around with crazy haircuts that looked like the Three Stooges, and all the magazines and newspapers had the Beatles on the front page. When I saw them at rehearsal and they did a couple of songs, I thought they were just a nice little rock’n’roll band. ‘Melody Maker’ wanted my opinion of the Beatles, and I said very bluntly, ‘If I know my business, the Beatles will be out of business in about a year.’ Little did I realise that they would turn out to be geniuses who wrote wonderful songs.”

Buddy Greco (754) did witness John Lennon’s eccentricity: “I knew John Lennon was a little nuts because while we were talking upstairs, he was putting water in balloons and throwing them into the street. When he said that line about the jewellery, I was backstage and I fell on the floor laughing. It was a great line.” Indeed it is. The funniest line that people recall from a Royal Variety Performance wasn’t even said by a comedian.

Sonny Curtis (755): “Lou Adler was a record producer who got me a deal with Dimension Records. The Beatles were about to hit America and so he and I wrote ‘The Beatle I Want To Be’ together. It was so early that the record company didn’t realise how the Beatles spelt their name and put ‘BEETLES’ on the label.”

In February 1964 the Beatles conquered America with their live performances in Washington and New York and TV appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show”. Pat Boone (756): “I have never seen anything like the audience reaction for the Beatles. The fans would shriek from the moment they came on until long after they’d gone and you couldn’t hear them perform. It was somewhat like that with Elvis and somewhat like that with me, but with us the screaming was at the beginning, at the start of a song they’d recognise, then they’d go quiet because they wanted to hear it and go crazy at the end.”

Bobby Vinton (757): “I had the No.l record in America with a sentimental ballad ‘There! I’ve Said It Again’ and it was a historic moment when the Beatles replaced me with ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’. I was still No.l on a radio station in Philadelphia and the Beatles were No.2, but the Beatles had such hardcore fans that they were threatening the DJ. They said they would break his car window or flatten his tyres. He said, ‘Bobby, I’m sorry you’re outselling the Beatles here but I’ll have to drop you to No.2.”

Gene Pitney (758): “‘24 Hours From Tulsa’ was totally against the grain of what was going on at the time. The British Invasion had happened. All the long hair groups were happening and in the middle of it all, ‘Tulsa’ was a big record. It goes back to having a piece of great material.”

Bobby Vinton maintained his popularity, but the British invasion knocked many American hitmakers off the charts. Brian Hyland (759): “Well, there’s only so much room on the charts - you can only have 40 records in the Top 40 - and what they were doing was a whole new thing.”

Bobby Vee (760): “There was such an influx of British records after the Beatles made it that anyone with an English accent was in demand. It was absolutely essential that the disc-jockeys should be Beatle crazy and English mad. It made a major dent in the careers of so many American pop singers.”

Dion (761): “The British Invasion had an effect on us. New acts were coming in and throwing rock’n’roll back to us. You need new blood to grow and that’s what the British Invasion was all about. They were bringing new ideas to the party.”

Duane Eddy (762): “Trends change of course, but I welcomed it as I had been on the road for five years, only going home to make a new album, and I was tired. I was happy to sit in my home in Beverly Hills and just go to the studio and cut a new album every few months.”

Lou Christie (763): “To be quite honest, it was fine by me. In the middle of the English invasion, when the Beatles were No.l, I was right alongside them with ‘Lightnin’ Strikes’. Most of my friends did fall by the wayside though. I was lucky because I wasn’t packaged as a teenage idol. I knew how to make records and I knew how to write songs, while that was a mystery to some of them. I always approached it as writing the best songs and making the best records for my voice.”

Chris Montez (764): “You could say that the British acts knocked us off the charts, but, in my case, I had a bad contract and I was cheated. I was heartbroken, so I thought I would go back to school and study. It worked out fine. One day I went with a friend to pick up some tapes from Herb Alpert’s company. Herb didn’t like the tapes but my friend introduced me. Herb asked what I was doing and I told him I was going to school. He asked me to record for A&M but I wasn’t interested. A couple of months later I changed my mind and Herb had an idea for ‘The More I See You’ which was a song I’d never heard before. We made some good records - and he paid me.” Chris is also a graduate of the Sunland Conservatory of Music.

Freddy Cannon (765): “I loved the British records but I idolised the Rolling Stones, who made raw records like Chuck Berry. I am a true rocker, and the real raw records are the ones that I like best.”

Dr John (766): “I didn’t like their first records at first, but around the time of ‘Michelle’, I realised that they were doing some hip stuff. That often happens - sometimes you don’t recognise the quality of something when it first hits.”

Sonny Curtis (767): “Elvis’s first records are great but he failed to grow like the Beatles. The Beatles started with ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘Please Please Me’, which were very good records, but then every record they came out with was a little bit different and they kept adding new twists. Man, I remember hearing ‘Yesterday’ and thinking, ‘What a great song and what a great idea to do it with a string quartet’. When I heard that, I had to turn the radio off as anything that followed it couldn’t possibly please me after that. The Beatles were always wanting to grow while Elvis gave up after a while.”

Chet Atkins (768): “Their melodies are so wonderful that I still play them in my shows. They wrote some of the greatest music of the century, if not the greatest. I admire them so much and their melodies are even greater than their lyrics. The melody is never less than the lyrics and that really is the problem with country music. Country writers can come up with clever lyrics but then they throw melodies on: they don’t work hard enough or put their heart into it. That’s not true of the Beatles. They were geniuses at writing great melodies whether it be ‘Lady Madonna’ or ‘Michelle’.”

Record producer Bob Keane (769): “The Beatles’ melodies were different to the other melodies you heard, a bit more exotic, and you got hooked immediately because you knew it was a Beatles song. Bobby Fuller had the makings of the next Beatles. He had his own sound but he wasn’t able to develop it before he was killed.”

Another record producer, Huey P. Meaux (770), jumped onto the bandwagon. “I produced several big records in the early 60s but the Beatles came along and knocked me off the charts. Doug Sahm had been bugging me to make some records with him and I told him, ‘Doug, we gotta figure out where the Beatles are coming from. If we don’t, we’ll starve to death.’ I got a case of T-bird wine - it was $1 a bottle and it’d get you drunk in a hurry and keep you drunk for days - and I bought some Beatle records. I went to the Wayfarer Hotel in San Antonio and the clerk said, ‘Why do you want three rooms?’ and I said, ‘I’ll be playing these records pretty loud.’ I realised that it was all so simple, the Beatles had a beat, and we were just not catching onto that. I called Doug, who was also in San Antonio, and I said, ‘C’mon over, man, I’m drunk but I’ve figured it out.’ I told him to write some songs with that beat and to grow his hair. He came up with ‘She’s About A Mover’ and ‘The Rains Came’ and we recorded them at the Goldstar studios in Houston. American d-js would play anything from England, so I called up London Records in New York and I said, ‘Put this out. Leave my name off and we’ll call Doug something else.’ I thought about knighthoods and the Sir Douglas Quintet sounded perfect. The record made the charts and Doug kept bugging me, ‘I want to go on the road, man. When will you tell them it’s me?’ I told him to keep quiet until the record made the Top 40. Doug was booked for the Hullabaloo TV show in New York City, which was mc’d by Trini Lopez. Freddie and the Dreamers were on the show but there was also Doug and me, Vikki Carr from El Paso and Trini himself. Trini said, ‘I can’t believe so many people from Texas are on the same show. You’ve got to let me tell the people.’ I said, ‘Go ahead,’ and that was the night that America learnt the identity of the Sir Douglas Quintet.”

Gene Pitney (771): “A lot of people learnt English through the Beatles’ records. I was relieved when the market changed and English records were acceptable everywhere, and I thank the Beatles for that. I did a show in Italy and I worked hard to do the whole show in Italian. I found out later that I’d been wasting my time as they didn’t want that at all. They wanted the show in English.”

P.J. Proby (772) was brought to the UK to appear on a TV special, ‘Around The Beatles’, for the producer, Jack Good. “I’d loved the ballad, ‘Hold Me’, and I could sing a slow version like Dick Haymes. When I knew I was coming here, I felt I had to do something like the Beatles, so I took all the old songs I knew and worked out which ones would fit in with their sound. (Sings) ‘Hold me, yeah, oooo’. We recorded it in a small studio at IBC with Big Jim Sullivan on lead, Jimmy Page on rhythm, Ginger Baker on drums, Charles Blackwell on piano and Jimmy Powell on harmonica. When the TV programme was recorded, Paul McCartney said, ‘This is P.J. Proby, our best friend and a big star from the USA’ and I was none of those things. I’d known Paul for 15 days and I wasn’t a star in America. I’d been a motorcycle delivery boy, a stuntman and a songwriter. Paul said all that and I had to live up to it. When ‘Hold me’ came out, I was sure it was going to be a Miss on ‘Juke Box Jury’ because Dick Haymes was on the panel. I’d done a rock version of his beautiful ballad and when I shook hands with him, I said, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.’ I told him afterwards, ‘I can sing ballads, you just haven’t heard me yet’. He said, ‘I was in the era of the crooners and we had to sing like that. You’re with the Beatles and you’ve done a great job.’ I thought, ‘If Mr. Haymes accepts me, if the Beatles accept me, I think I’ll stick around.”

An intriguing aspect of all this is that so many pre-Beatle hitmakers recorded Lennon and McCartney songs. Not only the rock’n’rollers, but also the famed MOR singers like Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. Barney Kessel (773): “Who knows what their motives were? It might be that they liked the songs, it might be that their producers insisted that they did them to sell records, it might be that they felt intimidated and said, ‘I want to reach younger people so I’m going to do something they will identify with.’ If they did those songs for any other reason than that they loved them, then they were not true to themselves.”

Bearing that in mind, it is worth noting that most of the major rock’n’roll stars recorded songs from the Beatles’ catalogue. The Beatles’ name was a nod to the Crickets and they were quickly off the mark with their 1964 album, “California Sun”. It contained “Please Please Me”, “I Saw Her Standing There”, “From Me To You”, “I Want To Hold Your Hand” and a flaccid “She Loves You” as well as a song the Beatles recorded, “Money”. The arrangement of their 1964 hit single, “La Bamba”, also owes much to the Beatles’ “Twist And Shout”. The mutual admiration continued as Paul McCartney was to buy Buddy Holly’s song catalogue and he often sang on stage with the Crickets, also producing their 1988 single, “T-Shirt”.

Sonny Curtis (774) of the Crickets also made solo recordings: “I was sitting around the apartment one night, playing ‘All My Loving’ fingerstyle on the guitar. Snuff Garrett said, ‘I like that. Let’s do a whole album like that.’ The next day I was in the studio so I didn’t have time to arrange anything and was groping for something to play. ‘Beatle Hits, Flamenco Style’ is a nice album though, not earth-shattering, but pretty good for what it is.”
With some reluctance, Elvis Presley met the Beatles at his home in Bel Air in 1965. They failed to win him round as he later denounced them for their subversive views and, somewhat hypocritically, drug-taking. He gave them a namecheck in his version of “I’ve Never Been To Spain” (1972) and he sang “Yesterday”, “Hey Jude” and “Get Back” (in a medley with “Little Sister”) with his return to splendour in Las Vegas.

While the Beatles were going for world domination, Elvis made no attempt to reclaim his throne, making movies that were unworthy of his talent. Albert Goldman (775): “Elvis had no say in the movies he appeared in, any more than he had a say in any of the other major decisions in his career. He would get a script, he would examine it, he would be appalled by it, he would make devastating statements about it, and then he would go out and do it. There you have the essential Elvis Presley - he was a mule pulling a plough.”

Doc Pomus (776): “I thought some of his films were marvellous. I loved ‘Viva Las Vegas’, and ‘Wild In The Country’ was very interesting. Okay, a lot of them weren’t up to par but that’s how it is with people who are singer / actors rather than actor / singers, you know, the motion picture becomes a vehicle for the singing.”

Gene Vincent's guitarist, Johnny Meeks (777): “I was in ‘Roustabout’ with Elvis and I’ll bet you never saw me. I’m a part of the band but all eyes are on Elvis. He was like that in real life. You could be standing right next to Elvis but everybody would be looking at him. He had more charisma than anyone I know.”

“I Saw Her Standing There” was inspired by Little Richard - just listen to the “Wooo”. Little Richard, who worked with the Beatles during their formative years, cut his own “I Saw Her Standing There” on his 1970 album, “The Rill Thing”. Equally, “Lady Madonna” was based on Fats Domino’s style and he recorded it along with “Lovely Rita” for the 1968 album, “Fats Is Back”, produced by Richard Perry.

Many people would argue that the best covers of the Beatles’ songs were by Ray Charles. His “Yesterday” (1967) was positively ferocious, while his “Eleanor Rigby” was the blueprint for Aretha Franklin’s US hit single. “The Everly Brothers Show” (1970) included snatches of “The End”, “Hey Jude” and “Give Peace A Chance”, and they sang a new Paul McCartney song, “On The Wings Of A Nightingale”, on a minor hit single in 1984. Roy Orbison sang “Help!” on the BBC’s “Tribute To John Lennon” (1984) and teamed up with George Harrison for the Traveling Wilburys (1988). Unfortunately, Roy only discovered in the late 80s that the Beatles had originally written “Please Please Me” as an Orby-styled ballad: maybe he would have recorded it as such in the 90s.

The excellent album, “Duane Eddy, His Twangy Guitar And The Rebels” (1987), included “Rockestra Theme”, written and produced by Paul McCartney, and “The Trembler”, written by Duane and Ravi Shankar with George Harrison on slide guitar. Another instrumental act, the Ventures recorded “I Feel Fine” for their “Knock Me Out” album (1965) and “Strawberry Fields Forever” for their “Super Psychedelics” album (1967).
Among the other covers were Brenda Lee (“Can’t Buy Me Love”, 1965), Esther Phillips (“And I Love Him”, 1965), Brian Hyland (“Norwegian Wood”, 1966), Jackie Wilson (“Eleanor Rigby”, 1970), Smokey Robinson and the Miracles (“And I Love Her”, 1970), Link Wray (“I Saw Her Standing There”, 1979), Chubby Checker (“Back In The USSR”, 1969) and Ike and Tina Turner (“Come Together”, 1969). Dion recorded both “Let It Be” and “Blackbird” on his 1971 album, “You’re Not Alone”. Among the more bizarre covers are Screamin’ Jay Hawkins singing the hell out of Paul McCartney’s “Monkberry Moon Delight” (1979) and Louis Armstrong chanting “Give Peace A Chance” (1970). “It’s Only Love” was not amongst the Beatles’ best performances, and Gary US Bonds outclassed the original on his 1981 hit single, produced by Bruce Springsteen.

Although he recorded none of their songs, Carl Perkins provides the strongest link between the rock’n’roll stars and the Beatles. They recorded several of his songs, both as the Beatles and in their solo careers, and Paul McCartney recorded a duet with him, “Get It”, in Montserrat in 1982. During the session, Paul told Carl a dirty joke and Carl’s laugh has been added to the track, which is featured on the “Tug Of War” album. In 1984 George, Ringo and Eric Clapton were among the musicians paying tribute to Carl Perkins in “A Rockabilly Session - Carl Perkins And Friends” for Channel 4. Carl Perkins (778): “It’s hard for me to realise that I influenced people like George Harrison and Eric Clapton with my simple guitar licks as they play so much better than I do. They tell me that I caused them to pick up their guitars, but, man, they have run off and left me.”

Carl’s final album, “Go Cat Go!” (1996) includes a duet with Paul McCartney (“My Old Friend”), George Harrison (“Distance Makes No Difference With Love”) and Ringo Starr (“Honey Don’t” with Carl’s voice added to a stage performance). Carl Perkins (779): “I went to AIR studios at Montserrat and I recorded with Paul for ‘Tug Of War’. I did ‘Get It’ with him and I played rhythm guitar on ‘Ebony And Ivory’, which was a No.l song. I was there eight days and the night before I was leaving, I sat out on the patio and a song came to me. (Sings a snatch of ‘My Old Friend’) I never wrote it down and the next day I said to Paul, ‘I am better at singing than I am at talking and this is what I want to say.’ Paul and Linda had tears in their eyes when I sang it, and Linda said, ‘Carl, how did you know that was the last thing that John ever said to Paul?’ I was spooked by that, and she said, ‘As we left the Dakota, John patted Paul on the shoulder and said, “Think about me every now and then, my old friend.”’ That song sent chills over my body and Paul and Linda believe that John Lennon visited my mind. He was speaking to Paul through me. The same thing happened with ‘Distance Makes No Difference With Love’. I said those words to my wife, Val, the night before I was leaving to visit George. I never wrote them down and the next day I said to George, ‘I must sing this while it’s still on my mind.’ He and Olivia said it was beautiful and when Paul heard the song, he said, ‘John Lennon’s been back. Anytime you’re singing, Carl, just go on. Don’t push the thoughts away because it may be him again.’”

Spencer Leigh