Tags
I missed a couple of Beatle events while in transit the last couple days, though they were not especially important ones. On March 1 and 2 Paul McCartney produced a new single for Mary Hopkin, “Goodbye” b/w “Sparrow.”
“Goodbye” is not one of Paul’s masterpieces, but still reached number 2 on the UK charts:
“Sparrow” was written by Benny Gallagher and Graham Lyle, the latter of whom would later write Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do with It?”
After this Paul gradually disappeared from Mary Hopkin’s career. According to Wikipedia,
At McCartney’s insistence, Hopkin … recorded a cover of “Que Sera, Sera” in August 1969. Hopkin had no wish to record the song and refused to have the single released in Britain. Having been issued in France only in September 1969, it was subsequently released in North America in June 1970. The single peaked at number 77 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 47 in Canada, and was also a hit in Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Zimbabwe.
In 1971 Hopkin married Tony Visconti, who produced her album Earth Song, Ocean Song. After marrying she mostly retired from the music business — though she did sing backup on many Visconti productions, including (as previously noted) David Bowie’s Low.
Meanwhile, on March 2, 1969 — the day on which Lou Reed turned 27 — John Lennon appeared with Yoko at a musical event at Cambridge University, which The Beatles Bible cites as “the first concert performance any of The Beatles had given away from the group.”
However historic the circumstance, it was not an auspicious debut. Says TBB, “Lennon remained towards the back of the stage, coaxing feedback and atonal noises from his Epiphone Casino guitar while Ono howled and shrieked into a microphone.” This performance was later released as Side 1 of John and Yoko’s album Unfinished Music No 2:Life with the Lions. And here, dear readers, I leave you to your own devices; my sense of responsibility does not extend to subjecting myself to 26 minutes of this atrocity. Approach at your own risk.
Jesus, Bill. Yoko sounded a lot worse than I remembered. She is a musical fraud, wtf was John thinking?