Penny Lane never got to number one. It and the other track Strawberry Fields was held off the numner one spot by Please Release Me by Englebert Humperdinck, difficult as that is to believe nowadays as it was probably their best double sided release. Bob Dylan said he first heard Paperback Writer when driving his car. He pulled over listened to the rest of it and decided that was what he wanted to sound like and changed the direction of his music and started using electric guitars in his act.
here's a list of number 2s for us all to peruse. http://freespace.virgin.net/sharon.persky/UK number two singles.html some cracking toons there!
Jean Genie by Bowie denied by Little Jimmy Osmond. Vienna denied by Shaddup you Face. Both Oasis and Pulp denied by Robson and Jerome. There's many more but those ones standout to me as horrendous.
best not to take the charts too seriously, i found at a younger age. these days i expect few to have similar tastes to mine. "the stock market for your hi-fi" as someone once sang.
Oh I never take it seriously, you only have to look at that list. Or look at the charts now. They're the same 40 songs, and all of them crap.
good. yeah, there's aways been tosh in there somewhere. now and then there are half decent phases in music. sometimes it hits the charts.
occasional beatle drummer andy white has died, aged 85. https://uk.news.yahoo.com/andy-white-fifth-beatle-first-hit-dies-85-163200249.html#qJ8nynF
Went to a concert a few nights ago by a Canadian quartet called 'The Tenors'. Absolutely frickin' brilliant. They did every conceivable genre of music except rap-crap. Their standing-O masterpiece was Pavarotti-style Nessun Dorma, but they also did Queen (Who wants to live forever?), Elvis (It's now or never), and several others, but for me the highlight was George Harrison's 'Something in the way ...'. Couldn't stop the tears ... utterly gob-smacking. Go and see them if you get the chance.
Correct Castro I should have mentioned that they were my personal faves not the programmes, which I haven't seen yet, and yes In My Life was an album track written at an early stage by Lennon I think the lyrics are some of the best he wrote.
I seem to remember that it took Liverpool a long time to acknowledge The Beatles Liverpool link and capitalise on it but I can't remember why, although I do remember some local disgust that as soon as The Beatles 'made it' they moved away from Liverpool to be nearer London. I'm not sure if Gerry Marsden and his crew stayed local for most of their fame.
That wasn't really the case.There were some , like similar folk in Hull, who considered anyone who moved away as traitors who had deserted them. The more sensible ones realised that all the studios and contacts were in London. All the bands, apart from ones from London, headed there. Liverpool has milked the .Beatles connection from day one. There are people who were only associated with them for 2 or 3 yesrs who are still making money out of reminiscing about those days.
2 others records come to mind that were chart toppers of dubious distinction: Grandad: Clive Dunn Ernie the fastest milkman in the west: Benny Hill
Difference between the sixties and early seventies and now was the breadth of music in the charts. A lot of what were then older people bought records. Ken Dodd had the biggest selling record of the year for example. Now with digital downloads it has all altered.
One thing I can't remember is if there is a collective statue of The Beatles in the dock area, there is one of Lennon and of Billy Fury but the last time I was there I don't recall seeing one of George Harrison either.
Not really. If more people bought them than other records that is the way it works. Here's a list of the top selling singles each year. Rarely have they been what you or I may consider the best record. One surprising thing is Elvis Presley only had one single that sold a million copies in the UK and itbwasn'tbthe biggest seller of the year it came out.
