Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane & All You Need is Love...

Years from now, when we are all dust, these clips will still be three of the strangest bit's of music put to film, although All You Need is Love isn't really music put to film as they sang live in the studio, but it's still very odd.

There something so unreal about The Beatles at this time, that they were so huge globally, universally even, yet their music and themselves seem so personal and familiar, like they are singing and playing to us, each and everyone individually.

The movie clips themselves are noteworthy for their very oddness, strangeness and at times down right sinister quality. You have the fab four wandering around some God forsaken autumnal moor or heath, in balaclavas and furs, jumping from an impressive height, walking around backwards, drip painting and deconstructing some kind of butchered piano and all under a very witchy looking tree that I for one wouldn't hang around under after dark ..very strange.

John Lennon striding against the human traffic on a Liverpudlian high street and then the four of them meeting like some street gang, then even odder, The Beatles on horse back in some street which cuts to a decrepit ruin in the country, the four beatles decked out in red hunting jackets ride cryptically past a stage set up with drums and amps to a table where they are waited on by what look like four footmen before John Lennon upends the whole thing.

And the last clip...The Beatles elevated above a crowd made up of their musical peers including Keith Richards, Donovan, Marianne Faithful and Keith Moon, demi Gods in their own domain, Dons to the whole 60's pop gangster family, gazing down upon their minions and postulating about love and other weirdness while Mick Jagger sings and claps along looking like a sheepish schoolboy...what were these people on?

Strawberry Fields


Penny Lane


All You Need is Love

More Who!!

Does anyone out there remember when Top of The Pops really meant something? 7.30pm on a Thursday night heralded the almost beginning of the weekend, only one more day of school then freedom for a whole 48hrs.

You'd had your fill of Grange Hill, you'd had your dinner and it was time to settle in for a half hour of God only knows what. Maybe Kate Bush in her Babushka gear, maybe The Smiths outraging dads the land over with bunches of flowers and hearing aids, The Jam singing "Town Called Malice" with Paul Weller in a kitchen apron, Iggy pop pulling the heads of doll's, pan's people dancing to "In the Summertime" in frighteningly short shorts as your dad sent you out of the room to ask your mum something, Dave Lee Travis, Jimmy bloody Saville...Ohh I could go on.

Well of course you could spend your life reliving it all on Youtube and in a recent interview it sounded like that's exactly what Johnny Marr is doing with himself these days, but for all you TOTP fans of old and even older, here's the Mighty Who doing "Won't Get Fooled Again".

Imagine this bunch of psychopathic looking hairies blasting out on a frigid Thursday December evening in 1971..Sure as hell beats the pants of what passes for pop music in "The Industry" (says it all really) these days. Kid's of today are getting fooled and they don't even know it. Oh God I sound like some 40 year old!! Enjoy...

The Who, "Won't Get Fooled Again"

The Who – The Seeker.

Despite the dodgy  sound quality..this is a great clip from 1971 of The Who at their hairiest best. The Seeker is a bit of a lost Who classic in my mind. I mention it in conversation and people tend to look at me blankly, I mean they do that anyway, but more blank than usual! Anyway. It's a great track, love those sarcastic lyrics... Strangely for The Who, they all look really fit and healthy here, even Keith. Great seeing the boys doing their thing. Enjoy.