Martin Lewis | Club Random with Bill Maher

Bill Maher welcomes Beatles historian Martin Lewis for a lively, opinionated conversation celebrating the music, myths, and enduring legacy of the greatest band in rock history. Together, they unpack how John Lennon and Paul McCartney built one of history's greatest creative partnerships, challenge the stories fans have been repeating for decades, and revisit the moments that changed music forever. Martin shares behind-the-scenes stories from his years working with Paul McCartney, explains why The Beatles continue to captivate each new generation, and gleefully busts some of the band's most persistent myths. Bill and Martin debate Get Back, A Hard Day's Night, Brian Epstein's influence, John Lennon's songwriting, Paul McCartney's genius, the breakup, and why, sixty years later, everyone still thinks they're the Beatles expert. Support our Advertisers: -Try ZipRecruiter for free at https://www.ziprecruiter.com/random -Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at https://www.rula.com/RANDOM #rulapod #ad Subscribe to the Club Random YouTube channel: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/clubrandompodcast?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Watch episodes ad-free – subscribe to Bill Maher’s Substack: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://billmaher.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you listen: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/ClubRandom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Buy Club Random Merch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clubrandom.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices ABOUT CLUB RANDOM Bill Maher rewrites the rules of podcasting the way he did in television in this series of one on one, hour long conversations with a wide variety of unexpected guests in the undisclosed location called Club Random. There’s a whole big world out there that isn’t about politics and Bill and his guests—from Bill Burr and Jerry Seinfeld to Jordan Peterson, Quentin Tarantino and Neil DeGrasse Tyson—talk about all of it. For advertising opportunities please email: [email protected] ABOUT BILL MAHER Bill Maher was the host of “Politically Incorrect” (Comedy Central, ABC) from 1993-2002, and for the last fourteen years on HBO’s “Real Time,” Maher’s combination of unflinching honesty and big laughs have garnered him 40 Emmy nominations. Maher won his first Emmy in 2014 as executive producer for the HBO series, “VICE.” In October of 2008, this same combination was on display in Maher’s uproarious and unprecedented swipe at organized religion, “Religulous.” Maher has written five bestsellers: “True Story,” “Does Anybody Have a Problem with That? Politically Incorrect’s Greatest Hits,” “When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Bin Laden,” “New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer,” and most recently, “The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass.” FOLLOW CLUB RANDOM https://www.clubrandom.com https://www.facebook.com/Club-Random-101776489118185 https://twitter.com/clubrandom_ https://www.instagram.com/clubrandompodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@clubrandompodcast FOLLOW BILL MAHER https://www.billmaher.com https://twitter.com/billmaher https://www.instagram.com/billmaher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:24Speaker 01

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• 0:54Speaker 02

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• 1:15Speaker 03

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• 1:24Bill Maher?

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• 2:01Bill Maher?

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• 2:38Speaker 05

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• 3:07Bill Maher?

  Breaking news: our merch just got a full revamp with all new designs and items. So if you want a little more random in your life, head over to clubrandom.com and check out the store. We've got premium hoodies, including our brand-new Quads hoodies with the updated logo, super soft t-shirts, super soft, for men and women, and even tie-dye shirts. All merch is available exclusively at clubrandom.com. While you're there, catch up on recent episodes, then grab some swag and bring a little random home. Once again, that's clubrandom.com.

• 3:48Speaker 06

  When McCartney tells you off, you get really upset.

• 3:51Bill Maher?

  Why? Because he told you off?

• 3:53Speaker 06

  You don't.

• 3:54Bill Maher?

  Oh, about what?

• 3:58Speaker 06

  No more live, no more concerts, no more nothing.

• 4:00Bill Maher?

  And then when he didn't do it, they killed him, right?

• 4:03Speaker 06

  Well, I'm not very good at saying.

• 4:07Bill Maher?

  Martin.

• 4:08Speaker 06

  That is me.

• 4:10Bill Maher?

  Finally, it's happening. Finally, The Beatles show is happening.

• 4:14Speaker 06

  Four years we were talking about doing this.

• 4:15Bill Maher?

  Really? Four?

• 4:17Speaker 06

  That's okay.

• 4:18Bill Maher?

  Seriously?

• 4:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, it's fine.

• 4:20Bill Maher?

  Wow. Great to see you.

• 4:22Speaker 06

  Long to see you again.

• 4:23Bill Maher?

  You look well.

• 4:24Speaker 06

  I'm not too bad for a-

• 4:25Bill Maher?

  You look like Martin Lewis always looked.

• 4:26Speaker 06

  Not too bad for an old man.

• 4:27Bill Maher?

  Yeah. I was at the beach.

• 4:32Bill Maher?

  You know, bodybuilding contest, they want me to come.

• 4:36Bill Maher?

  No, and at this beach, I saw this, I'm getting it for you, but those who are not watching this, it's a t-shirt that says "The Beatles," but it's B-E-E, Beatles, like the bug, and then it's four Volkswagen bugs crossing Abbey Road, as if, you know, like, different colored. So funny.

• 4:57Speaker 06

  Well, I'm very touched, and the first time I actually got involved with Her Majesty the Queen on a Beatles thing, she sent a royal proclamation about something to do with the Beatles, and she misspelled it like this: B-E-E-T-L-E-S. Great.

• 5:13Bill Maher?

  So funny.

• 5:14Speaker 06

  That's my retirement fund.

• 5:15Bill Maher?

  You British people, I had a British person here last week. You take that Queen shit so seriously. Like, I noticed when you said "her royal," whatever you said, it was like, come on, man.

• 5:26Speaker 06

  Yes, that's true.

• 5:27Bill Maher?

  No, I know. You know what? I'm all for, you know, things like that, that, I mean, not really a monarchy, but like, something that could make people feel good about their country and united, something that's like, non-political, but then everything becomes political. That's the problem.

• 5:47Speaker 06

  True. But, hey, McCartney wrote a song, "Her Majesty," so it's not entirely bad.

• 5:51Bill Maher?

  So, you know, Get Back. I mean, I keep reading, like, because, look, I don't know what was in people's minds, but they keep saying, and there was some anti-immigration stuff going on in Britain at the time, and this was Paul's protest against the anti, but Get Back to me sounds a little more like you would be pro.

• 6:17Speaker 06

  It was, he was just goofing around, and, you know, there was an anti-immigration thing, so he was mocking that, and so he did Get Back, he was ripping around with Get Back, and he turned it into that. But of course, nobody in those days ever expected loose rehearsal tapes to come out, so it was just goofing around. It only came out because it was a bootleg, it became a rootleg.

• 6:39Bill Maher?

  Well, it's in the movie that any Beatle person, probably anyone listening to this, saw, the Peter Jackson.

• 6:49Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 6:50Bill Maher?

  You know, it's in there, right?

• 6:51Speaker 06

  It is, but I don't think anybody took it.

• 6:54Bill Maher?

  No, but you see him, you see, that's one of the, maybe it's the only time where you see Paul McCartney, like, take a song from literally the moment of just finding it. He's waiting for the others to show up, or maybe just John was late, there's probably. So he's there, and he's writing it on the bass, remember that?

• 7:12Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 7:13Bill Maher?

  And it's just, and then the lyrics were, I mean, you look, I love The Beatles, as you know, but, I mean, they're, you know, some lyrics are just gobbledegook because the song is so good and you don't care, and that's one of them. Like, what the fuck is that song about? It just came from somewhere, okay, maybe about immigration, maybe it was like, hey, we want you here on our shores, which is why I'm calling the song "Get Back." Okay, and possibly could be. I will say this, he also wrote a song called "Too Many People." You remember that one?

• 7:43Speaker 06

  I did. Look, the thing is, the stream, the stream, no, sometimes in that, in those things, it's a stream of consciousness. It's interesting, the number of musicians who they say they write the song, they write the music first, and then they look for lyrics to fit, which is always seem crazy to me. Surely you want a song about something, but no, musicians often write a tune, and then they're searching for words.

• 8:06Bill Maher?

  Absolutely, or they completely change it. John Lennon's, one of my favorite of his solo body of work, which is, you know, less than the other two writers, because he didn't live that long, and, you know, but "Jealous Guy" is a great ballad. And I know for you, probably something you wrote or somebody like you, maybe the poor man's Martin Lewis, what he wrote, but that started out as a completely different lyric. But like a blue jay, the way I work in comedy also, when you find something good, a little nugget that's good, a little seed that's good, you bring it home to the nest.

• 8:48Bill Maher?

  Maybe you'll have it later, and he's like, no, this melody is great, this lyric was completely different, it's about nature or something.

• 8:55Speaker 06

  That's right, Charles, nature. This is the thing, though, to use the word "blue jay," it's a bird native to America as well, but in England, we always thought about the magpie, and that's what The Beatles were. They were magpies. They were constantly picking up shards of different types of music, different genres, lyrics, plucking them out of everywhere, and it became like a patchwork quilt.

• 9:16Bill Maher?

  I think every musician does that, they just did it better.

• 9:20Speaker 06

  Way better.

• 9:22Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Speaker 06

  Way better, and also, and also-

• 9:24Bill Maher?

  To our ears, I mean, come on, you know, I don't, you can't be that dogmatic about-

• 9:32Bill Maher?

  The people, different generations have just different tastes. And who's to say? I mean, I don't get Taylor Swift, but she's as big as they were. And, you know, that's maybe something that can't happen across these years. I don't know.

• 9:49Speaker 06

  Listen, I agree. It's dangerous to get into a better than and all of that nonsense. However, there is something that was different. There was a renaissance in the sixties of music. A lot from Britain, but some also from America. But what was unique about The Beatles was it has transcended time in that there are generations that are enjoying The Beatles that you wouldn't have normally expected. The normal arc of celebrity physics is you go up and you go down. You might come back, have a little revival. The Beatles have been evergreen. And I think, and this is a theory I have, is that it's to do with, um, our attitudes

• 10:29Speaker 06

  are, we don't encourage racism or ageism or any kind of ism music. There's another ism that never gets talked about, and that is datism. When the stuff was made, and I think that's the most irrelevant thing, saying that The Beatles is, oh, it's so sixties. We don't say Shakespeare is so sixteen century or the Marx Brothers are so nineteen thirties.

• 10:51Bill Maher?

  Well, you don't, and I don't, but plenty of people do exactly that. I mean, and I kind of don't blame them. Shakespeare, and I read Macbeth and knew it pretty well in high school, high school, not even college, I think. I think we did Macbeth. And I was trying to watch, they made a movie of it with, I think, Michael Fassbender, who I, great actor, and like, I don't know what these people are talking about, even though I know the basics of the play. And Lady Macbeth, I know she was not to be trusted.

• 11:25Speaker 06

  I'm with you. I can't stand Shakespeare.

• 11:27Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 11:28Speaker 06

  But, all right, no, no, no, I use a bad analogy. The Marx Brothers is a better analogy because the Marx, the humor of the Marx Brothers is not dependent on you having lived in or being familiar with the thirties. You either like it or you don't like it. The point is, it's stuff is either, it's either good or it's bad. It's not really, it doesn't really matter when it was made, surely.

• 11:46Bill Maher?

  I did really like Hamlet. I read it in college and I feel like emotionally it hit me because I was a brooding loser, you know?

• 11:57Speaker 06

  No.

• 11:58Bill Maher?

  Yeah, smart, but yeah, brooding and a loser. I'm sorry, but that's a brooding loser. At college, at Cornell, there was no girls. I didn't know how to get them if I could. It just, you know what? It just wasn't good. And academia pressure and cold and it just, it would just.

• 12:14Speaker 06

  So when the Help album came out, I'm a Loser, that was your favorite song?

• 12:17Bill Maher?

  Uh, no. Uh, I was never that crazy about I'm a Loser. And I feel like he did it like three times and it got better. I'm a Loser and Help and Nowhere Man to me are a trilogy because they're all basically the same theme. Uh, I'm a Loser, Nowhere Man, you know? Help, it's like, you know, you could combine the lyrics and make it really into a dramatic.

• 12:50Speaker 06

  And that all interested me, that all comes out of a, one of what I think was the crucial turning point, the Lennon. And that was meeting Elvis. In nineteen fifty-six, there's nothing John Lennon, and indeed Paul, want to be more than Elvis. He's cool, he's the antithesis of everything.

• 13:06Bill Maher?

  I still want to be Elvis.

• 13:08Speaker 06

  Okay. But, and then, you know, that's the old.

• 13:11Bill Maher?

  His picture is around here somewhere. I like that.

• 13:14Speaker 06

  It's always ghost. But the point is, um, everyone, you know, wanting to, we know this old adage about don't meet your heroes.

• 13:21Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 13:22Speaker 06

  But The Beatles, they really loved Elvis. They worshipped him. He was the reason they started going. And the others, Chuck Berry and others, but Elvis was the king. They finally meet him in the summer of sixty-five at his house. And John Lennon resolves, I want to be not Elvis. He wanted to be the opposite. And all the great material that comes from Lennon after that meeting is because he doesn't want to be a fat guy sat around with a bunch of sycophants, um, just wasting away and doing cheesy movies and being controlled by his manager. He wants to do something.

• 13:57Bill Maher?

  Hold on. He wasn't doing cheesy movies, but he was just lying around, wasting away. By his own admission, he has said, he was quoted once as saying, complaining that, like with Sergeant Pepper, that, oh, Paul calls, he says he's written ten new songs and fuck, now I've got to write ten, you know? So he kind of was admitting that, you know, he was, it was like on acid for a year. I mean, it was, he was out to lunch there for, for, you know, not obviously very functional, especially musically, but that when there was no touring and no, nothing to get up in the morning for and drugs all night and, you know, Yoko, New Love.

• 14:37Speaker 06

  Right. But the point I'm making is that he didn't want to become just a rich pop star sitting around. And he may have done it for a little bit, but ultimately he was motivated. All the songs that come out of there and then the political and all the other stuff is he doesn't want to be Elvis.

• 14:54Bill Maher?

  As all of us, he was both. We're all both. What we all are, are people who do one thing for a while and then we go to the other thing because we're just tired of that, but we're going to go back to it, you know? You're single, I can't stand being in a relationship, then you're in a relationship, I gotta be sad, you know? That kind of, back and forth. And I think this is what he was doing, but in a, in a sort of musical, personal way.

• 15:18Speaker 06

  I became aware of how much of a big Beatles fan you were when we first met. I don't know if you remember, we started out bonding over The Beatles. That's how we first got friendly.

• 15:32Bill Maher?

  We were in a boy band, correct?

• 15:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 15:35Bill Maher?

  And we were, we didn't admit that we were doing The Beatles stuff, you know? We weren't like a Beatles tribute band, but plainly, you know, you had the harmonica. By the way, I was so happy when the harmonica era ended with The Beatles. I mean, how many songs do you think, do they have a harmonica?

• 15:53Speaker 06

  It's about three or four. They went.

• 15:55Bill Maher?

  Not three or four, it's probably ten or something.

• 15:57Speaker 06

  From Me to You, please, please. They went, yeah. They were on tour with Bruce Chanel and they heard him. And Delbert McClinton was the guy who was playing harmonica. It was a fad. They were always going through those fads.

• 16:08Bill Maher?

  I just have never liked the harmonica as an instrument. I feel like any idiot could kind of, kind of do it. I mean, is there really a skill to it?

• 16:18Speaker 06

  It was a phase. They went through that.

• 16:22Bill Maher?

  No, I know.

• 16:23Speaker 06

  But I remember when we got first talking about The Beatles and you picked up on something, the Beatles Live at the BBC album had come out, and you picked up that John had picked up on Lonesome, Tears of Eyes or something like that.

• 16:38Bill Maher?

  He, he, he nicked the riff.

• 16:40Speaker 06

  He nicked the riff. The sample, they call it these kids these days.

• 16:43Bill Maher?

  He nicked the riff from, I think it was Lonesome.

• 16:47Speaker 06

  Tears of, I Lonesome, Tears of Eyes.

• 16:48Bill Maher?

  Which sounds like an old Western song they were doing. That certainly wasn't one of theirs.

• 16:52Speaker 06

  No, no, it was a rockabilly thing.

• 16:53Bill Maher?

  Because we're talking about early days, like the fifties, like late.

• 16:56Speaker 06

  It was, it was a song from nineteen fifty-seven and this was nineteen sixty-nine.

• 17:00Bill Maher?

  And it wasn't their song. It was a song on the radio.

• 17:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:04Bill Maher?

  And that, that guitar riff is in the ballad of John and Yoko. I mean, and it works great.

• 17:11Speaker 06

  But it was, it was, it was in the era where John liked knocking off a song really fast. He came up with the idea for the song. Paul was around, George and Ringo were on vacation, so John and Paul go into the studio. They, this is a time when they're supposedly feuding. They, they're like old friends, they go in, they knock it out in six hours.

• 17:30Bill Maher?

  I've always made that same point to some people, and I don't understand why they take this tack that they were hating each other and fighting because of just what you said. There's the proof. It was May of sixty-nine. Easily, if they were fighting so much, John wouldn't have had the, you know, attitude, would have had the attitude of, I'm not going to give him a chance. I don't need him at all. And, or he could have called up Paul McCartney and said, I need help on this song. And Paul could have said, you know, you've been acting like an asshole lately, go make it yourself. But they didn't. They got together, one, he, John called Paul George, he called the other one Ringo because one, he was playing the drums and the other one.

• 18:15Bill Maher?

  It was completely congenial, as is the entire Peter Jackson movie. How can you not look at that? I mean, how can you look at that and not see this love affair between two guys? I know the other two guys are important and they are, but I'm sorry, that, you can't hide it on camera. They're always making eye contact, joking with each other, sitting across from each other. It's a, it's a love affair and it's, and it's on film.

• 18:42Speaker 06

  And I remember we talked, we talked about it when it first came out. And I said, that was the whole thing. I'd always hated this nonsense, oh, Yoko broke up The Beatles and she was intruding in the studio. John's completely ignoring her. She's just there, he's the girlfriend. His, his real girlfriend is Paul and they're having a blast. They're having a blast.

• 19:01Bill Maher?

  Exactly. You're right. She's.

• 19:04Speaker 06

  And listen, I saw, I saw this, um, the thing that used to go on that we, we know about as fans, the rivalry, the sibling rivalry, the healthy sibling rivalry between the two of them, who was going to have the A side of the next single.

• 19:21Bill Maher?

  That's my theory that I put out there and lots of the press people have picked that up now. That's, I think people are, it's a very important thing in my life to get this going. And I'm like Darwin with the theory of evolution. It may take years, but people are going to come around to my theory that John just did not like always coming in number two in this writing competition. And after a certain point, you can't name where he got the A side of the single. And it was like losing with great songs, Revolution, losing to Hey Jude, perfect example. But there's like eight other examples. And I, I just think that for somebody who loves singles and it was a competition.

• 20:06Bill Maher?

  You know, tap out.

• 20:08Speaker 06

  It wasn't John's first brave decision at the age of seventeen inviting Paul into the band. Paul plays guitar better than him at that little demonstration.

• 20:18Bill Maher?

  That's bad.

• 20:19Speaker 06

  Knows the song.

• 20:20Bill Maher?

  He himself, John Lennon himself had only played guitar once before that.

• 20:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 20:25Bill Maher?

  So there was no band.

• 20:27Speaker 06

  Well, there was the choir man. They, they, no, there was the choir man. They were, they were playing gigs.

• 20:31Bill Maher?

  Do you own a watchboard? You're in. I mean, come on.

• 20:35Speaker 06

  This means, no, but they, it's still.

• 20:37Bill Maher?

  Wasn't it one of the instruments?

• 20:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, a watchboard, you're absolutely right. T-chest bass. But the point is, he doesn't need, he's got his mates. He's the, he's the alpha. He's the one in charge. It's his group. He doesn't even need to invite this kid who's better looking, plays the guitar properly.

• 20:51Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 20:51Speaker 06

  Knows the lyrics. He invites him in because the guy, because it's, this is a musical blood brother. He gets it. And that was a smart thing to do. And he probably regretted it a little bit later on.

• 21:01Bill Maher?

  No.

• 21:01Speaker 06

  Because Paul, in the sense that, you know, he's competing.

• 21:04Bill Maher?

  He didn't, I don't think he regretted it, but you have to know when you're beat. And Paul McCartney was just in such a zone. And it sounded like Lennon wasn't, but again, I love I Am The Walrus, but it wasn't the A-side. And again, commercial success doesn't mean it's a better record. I Am The Walrus was a much better record than Hello Goodbye. And I love Hello Goodbye. But another example of we don't have any lyrics and you will not care. We're just going to, to like, read the phone book and the song is going to be so good that you're going to go, sure, hello, goodbye, very deep.

• 21:42Speaker 06

  Well, Paul rationalized it because it was a, it was demonstration to Alistair Taylor, who was Brian Epstein's assistant, of how to write a song. It's just a bunch of alphas. So, but meanwhile, John is just taking nonsense to create a, you know, a stream of consciousness.

• 21:59Bill Maher?

  Okay, speaking of that, how, what do you think of this? Riddle me this, Riddler. I think this song, Across The Universe, has a poetry to it that I don't find in any other John Lennon song. I mean, when you read those words, or as we listen to them, it's on a, on a level of poetry that makes me always say, why couldn't he do that more? He wrote songs that were interesting, like I Am The Walrus, but again, it's just gobbledygook.

• 22:33Speaker 06

  Well, he was, he was just, he was, he was having fun and with that one.

• 22:37Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 22:37Speaker 06

  But no, Across The Universe, he, the muse hit him. The music. He wrote five verses for that song. Normally he does two verses on repeat. He wrote five. He, he was just inspired on that.

• 22:47Bill Maher?

  Yeah, that lightning only hit once. On that level, when you read those lines, the words are flowing out like in this paper cup. The whole thing inside the letterbox. It's just like, it's just on a, on a whole nother level that, yeah. It's a shame, but not that he wrote bad lyrics, but I would have loved to have seen more of that.

• 23:08Speaker 06

  But that was, you know, that was when that particular aspect of the muse hit him. But then the John Lennon Plasticono Band solo album, which is only about feeling, that's not about words at all. That's after he went through the primal scream therapy with Arthur Janot. That, that, that album, for me, is probably the best Beatles solo album.

• 23:29Bill Maher?

  Which one?

• 23:30Speaker 06

  Plasticono Band, the first solo album, because it's.

• 23:33Bill Maher?

  Did that have God on it?

• 23:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's God, it's, and it's.

• 23:37Bill Maher?

  Isolation?

• 23:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's all about mother. It has mother. It's just about emotion. It's about emotion.

• 23:45Bill Maher?

  Yeah, you're right, because there'd been that primal scream therapy and, you know, he let it out and, as songs go, I, I don't know if I love the whole album, but God, awesome. I mean, what a, when you think about the journey from I Want To Hold Your Hand, or From Me To You, to God Is A Concept By Which We Measure Our Pain. Okay. That's called taking your audience with you, because like, there's nothing a thirteen-year-old could care less about than that kind of line. And yet the audience was not thirteen anymore. Now the audience was nineteen and that was, oh, that makes sense to me.

• 24:25Speaker 06

  But they took, took people along all the time. It's astonishing to think that they went from I Want To Hold Your Hand to I'd Love To Turn You On in three and a half years. That's that gap from boy band, for lack of a better word, to breaking the horizon, changing the horizon here. And they just did that in such a short space of time. And I, my theory is very simple. Up until the Beatles in popular music, what artists did was they just got better at doing the same thing. You played guitar better, you sang better. The Beatles wanted to change things innately. It wasn't some manifesto they sat down and wrote down. It just happened. And I was, do you remember Dennis Miller had a lovely gag he used to do once?

• 25:06Speaker 06

  That Michael Jackson and George Hamilton had crossed over on the international tan line.

• 25:11Bill Maher?

  Great joke. I do, yes.

• 25:13Speaker 06

  And I'm thinking that the Beatles, who were never braggots about this, they were proud of what they did. They grew up loving Chuck Berry and Little Richard and the Everly Brothers. But there's a certain point in 1965 when they cross over, where they're doing material that were beyond the wildest imagination of Elvis or Chuck Berry. They could never have written Yesterday Or In My Life. They couldn't have written things like that.

• 25:37Bill Maher?

  No, no.

• 25:37Speaker 06

  And they didn't brag about it, but then they were always self-deprecating. Oh, we're just a little band, you know.

• 25:42Bill Maher?

  Cole Porter did.

• 25:44Speaker 06

  Sure, but in the, in popular.

• 25:46Bill Maher?

  And that was before, you know.

• 25:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, but in popular, in the world of popular music, yeah.

• 25:51Bill Maher?

  That wasn't, that's not my era. I mean, I, I, you know, I came into the rock and roll era and they were, I mean, I was, for the majority of their career that they were together, I was not interested. I was too young. I only got on board like in 1968. So for the end of the, I was aware of them, but like, I was, my, my life centered around dirt and baseball. That, it was not about the Beatles. That's what my sister is interested in, so I knew it sucked.

• 26:19Speaker 06

  I'm getting a flashback to when we first talked in depth about the Beatles, for which I'd owe you an apology. I brought, I had a radio show and I brought you on my radio show to talk about the Beatles. And you were incredibly eloquent. You knew much more than I imagined somebody younger than me would know. That's where you referenced the, the John borrowing from an earlier song. And we talked about that then and I, and we talked about how weird was it for a kid who hears Abbey Road first and then hears She Loves You. And you say, hang on, what's going on here? How did it go backwards? And I think you suggested

• 26:59Speaker 06

  that there should be a course to teach kids about this traumatic thing of hearing the Beatles out of chronological sequence.

• 27:07Bill Maher?

  So it is July of 2026.

• 27:11Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 27:11Bill Maher?

  Correct?

• 27:12Speaker 06

  I believe so.

• 27:13Bill Maher?

  So that means it is 70 years since, almost to the day, maybe two weeks away. Yeah, like a week away from when John Lennon met Paul McCartney.

• 27:27Speaker 06

  It's six and a half years. It's actually, it was July 57.

• 27:32Bill Maher?

  No, 56.

• 27:33Speaker 06

  No, by the way, and I know, if you've got that, I know where, where you got it from. You got it from John Lennon, who got it wrong. In the official, the official biography of the Beatles.

• 27:44Bill Maher?

  See, that's why you have on the foremost Beatle. That's why you do. And I'm telling you, somewhere there's a poor man's Martin Lewis. Who is he?

• 27:53Speaker 06

  Well, I'm fairly poor myself, but this.

• 27:56Bill Maher?

  My mother used to say that. I used to love that. I love that generation and they don't give a shit about insulting people.

• 28:00Speaker 06

  I loved meeting your mum. She was the coolest one. One of your parties.

• 28:03Bill Maher?

  She was always saying that about people would, would come on TV. Oh, he's a poor man's Dean Martin.

• 28:10Speaker 06

  Well, I'm a poor man's Martin Lewis, so there you go. The, the thing is, John, when he gave his interview, they had no, no, they not just don't, they just, every day in the Beatles' lives in the 60s was like a month or a year and everybody, so much happened. So when they were interviewed during 1967 for the Hunter Davis biography, he just blithely said, oh, we met in July 56, because that was his memory. He was wrong. And Hunter Davis had to go back and we put an errata in the book. It was July 57. And that was, that was, that, it was, I call it, it was like a big bang, when Paul and John met. And so much happened. And that was the occasion when I got the Queen to send a message where she misspelled the Beatles' name.

• 28:55Speaker 06

  So obviously she didn't get the telegram.

• 28:56Bill Maher?

  This is terrible for the show because we've spent our whole monthly budget on Happy 70th.

• 29:04Bill Maher?

  Decorations that were supposed to come down. And now I now I hear it's sixty nine.

• 29:10Speaker 06

  We could change it. Your favorite your favorite number. It doesn't matter. We it's it's still. However, it is the seventieth anniversary of something of. Oh, it's the seventieth anniversary of when John falls with Quarryman, which you say is a completely unimportant band. But that it did that happen in fifty six.

• 29:27Bill Maher?

  Unimportant because.

• 29:29Speaker 06

  I I I take your point.

• 29:31Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 29:31Speaker 06

  But here's wasn't this. I mean, if you were writing a screenplay or a novel, and you put in your story that these two teenage kids who are nobodies meet up and ten years to the day, almost to the day later. And when they meet up, they're playing. And John's playing in front of four hundred people in a church courtyard. And almost ten years to the day later, the John and Paul plus George and Ringo are playing to four hundred million people simultaneously when they premiere All You Need Is Love on what was the first ever satellite hookup, which I've now learned means something different to today's kids. But that was.

• 30:13Bill Maher?

  It was, yeah, it was a different.

• 30:16Speaker 06

  But what but if you put that in a movie or a book, your editor would say, are you crazy? That's just too too uh too unlikely, implausible to happen. But that was the story.

• 30:27Bill Maher?

  Boy, you really never get over it, do you? I mean, I like them, but you know, I I mean, I got a that. No wonder you're the foremost.

• 30:34Speaker 06

  We could talk about the Monkees if you prefer.

• 30:37Bill Maher?

  No, but you know, Elvis did a satellite thing like in seventy three.

• 30:42Speaker 06

  Aloha from Hawaii or something.

• 30:44Bill Maher?

  Yes, it was a that was a similar thing.

• 30:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, it wasn't four hundred million people, and it wasn't the first.

• 30:50Bill Maher?

  Well, it was something or it was some early version of the kind of technology we have now where you could get a worldwide audience. I mean, at some point, the Oscars were they'd always had to get up there and spill their bullshit about how the Oscars.

• 31:05Speaker 06

  For what it's worth, that particular event wasn't started by the Beatles. It happened because an executive decided because of all this new technology, why don't we link the world? That was it, some kind of kumbaya moment. Technology, let's link up the world. And each country that was participating had to contribute something. And the the BBC wanted the Beatles badly, and they were completely disinterested. They'd just finished doing Sergeant Pepper. The last thing they wanted to do is a live TV show. They'd just told Brian Epstein, no more live, no more concerts, no more nothing.

• 31:37Bill Maher?

  And then when he didn't do it, they killed him, right?

• 31:40Speaker 06

  Well, I'm not limited to saying no.

• 31:42Bill Maher?

  No?

• 31:42Speaker 06

  But.

• 31:43Bill Maher?

  I thought.

• 31:44Speaker 06

  What happened?

• 31:44Bill Maher?

  Again, he knows more about the Beatles than me.

• 31:48Bill Maher?

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• 32:32Bill Maher?

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• 33:17Bill Maher?

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• 34:01Bill Maher?

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• 34:21Speaker 06

  Epstein does not get enough credit. Brian was the one who hagged them and said, this is an opportunity. This is a platform. A is the first ever satellite connection, but it's a platform. You can do a song. Don't do just any old song. Do a song that resonates. And that's when John comes up with All You Need Is Love.

• 34:40Bill Maher?

  I love that period in late nineteen sixty seven when they were for the first time, not because Brian Epstein died, and they were just so rudderless that they made Magical Mystery Tour. And they were so lazy that you see the pictures. They're still in those kind of Sergeant Pepper-y uniforms that they had like. You know, that album came out like just the last the year before. But they were like, ah, just get the we ones we didn't use, the Saturn. But really, look at the film, look at the video of Hello, Goodbye. They're in the.

• 35:15Speaker 06

  The pop, yeah, you're absolutely right. But there was, listen, that was, I mean, the the famous footage of John and George with the newsreel cameras there after being told that Brian Epstein's dead. And it's the shock stunned and things like that. They were rudderless. John said it afterwards. He said, when Brian died, I knew that was it. I knew we were fucked. And that was.

• 35:37Bill Maher?

  Well, they weren't fucked. They went on to make a bunch of more fucking awesome albums.

• 35:43Speaker 06

  Fucked in terms of their internal dynamic. He knew that Brian was the cement for them.

• 35:48Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but it would that cement would have wilted too at some point. It would that they were, look, you know, they've said it themselves, and it's really kind of boring because it's so obvious. But it is like a marriage. I'm sorry, or anything where you're seeing the same person all the time becomes a real challenge. You either like go into a sort of codependency or it chafes. And you know, when when you don't have the bond of male, female, or whatever your sexuality is, yeah, little things get on your nerves and you you want different things and go in different directions and are challenging each other and all the resentments that weren't brought up at the time, you just kind of buried them.

• 36:30Bill Maher?

  I mean, George Harrison is like such a mix of love and and bitterness about John Lennon. Like, he didn't mention him in his biography, which is amazing. But then, like, he did a tribute song for him when he died.

• 36:45Speaker 06

  Oh, this is years ago.

• 36:46Bill Maher?

  And I love that song. It's a great song. And but even in the song, he says, living with good and bad, I always looked up to you. And it's like, wow, even in the tribute song, you can't quite let it go. I'd just like to put it out there that I was living with both good and bad. So obviously, there was some bad, which is like what humans do.

• 37:09Speaker 06

  It's family, it's sibling rivalry, it's all of that stuff. Interestingly, I still think, I mean, I used to, being a tad older than you, when the Beatles broke up, it was really traumatic. It was like mum and dad are getting divorced, especially when John and Paul.

• 37:23Bill Maher?

  I can see you're not over it yet.

• 37:25Speaker 06

  No, but I this is what got me over it. My first boss was the great Derek Taylor. And I used to say to him.

• 37:33Bill Maher?

  The Beatles' publishers.

• 37:35Speaker 06

  You said, wasn't it appalling that they when they broke up? And they all that stuff. And he said, he said, come on, step step back a little bit and just see. No, it was time. They'd done it. They'd all got new loves. They were off. They'd they'd been together thirteen years. Are you best friends with the guy you guys you knew when you were sixteen?

• 37:54Bill Maher?

  Yes, but I never slept on top of him in a van, okay?

• 37:58Speaker 06

  That's all what they say.

• 37:59Bill Maher?

  We we we just didn't. We weren't, uh, when I was a young comedian at the clubs in New York, yes, you would see the same people just about every night because you went to the club every night and they went to the club every night. But it still wasn't the same as being in a band. And we weren't like working together as a team. We were in some ways competitive. I want to get stage time, you want to get stage time. We're both hanging out, but we also have a lot in common. And I don't remember there being a lot of beef about it. You know, we're all thinking, oh, my God, he made him the emcee. I plainly could have been.

• 38:34Speaker 06

  Right, because you're individual, because you're soloist, you're individual soloist, you're not an ensemble. But here, the point that Derek made was, look, just think, they they it's that old thing about lying, dying early and leaving a perfect body. We never got the embarrassment of the Beatles going disco. I mean, you know, I I.

• 38:53Bill Maher?

  No, we never got the embarrassment. That I I think I was a little high because I was at the pot store. Woody Harrelson will be very happy that I'm plugging the pot store because it's somewhat my money too. The Woods, great store here in Los Angeles. If you're looking for that legal product here, The Woods on Santa Monica Boulevard, there, Woody, I did it. But he did have a great party there one night with and Paul was there, Paul McCartney. And I think I seem to remember telling him, if I didn't, I've thought it a million times, that the besides the music, the best thing about the Beatles is that they did, John, a couple of weird little things,

• 39:36Bill Maher?

  but never did anything that made the fans go. Ugh, yuck. Oh, man. I like them so much, and it's still a great song, but you know, nothing like that. I mean, the weird, John got hooked on heroin, okay, people do, and it didn't hurt anybody else, and there's, there's just nothing that was an ick. They never gave us the ick, and a lot of artists give the ick, and I, I am a full believer in still listening, no matter what the ick is.

• 40:09Speaker 06

  I understand. Well, the, the thing, though, that happened, I think, with, um, The Beatles, when they, there was an interesting thing, a suspension of the usual attitudes of the British media. The British media, before The Beatles, were snarky. I mean, the, the British tabloid media, has always been a, a, a kind of nasty bunch. Um, the, and The Beatles, when The Beatles came along, suddenly, they were enchanted by The Beatles, because Britain had been in the doldrums, we were, it wasn't even black and white, we were in grey and white.

• 40:41Bill Maher?

  Pride. You needed somebody for national pride, like, oh, my God, we, Britain, we finally produced something, we hadn't done anything since Churchill winning the war.

• 40:51Speaker 06

  So, all that British, typical negativity went out the window, and they adored The Beatles. And that was all the way through to Christmas sixty-seven. Then they laid an A, Magical Mystery Tour, which was a hippie home movie, and on top of that, it premiered, it was, the BBC expected some kind of Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Christmas special, and they got a bunch of, four guys stoned out of their head. And worse than that, it's a colour film, and they showed it on the network, it was only black and white. So the media went crazy, The Beatles had lost it.

• 41:26Bill Maher?

  I love this period, because, you know, like, I love seeing John Lennon, like, doing stuff, like, you know he didn't want to do, but kind of he did. It's like, oh, Paul's gonna make us get into these nineteen thirties with suits, with tails, like Fred Astaire, with a top hat and a cane, and dance down the stairs.

• 41:49Speaker 06

  John enjoyed it also.

• 41:51Bill Maher?

  Exactly. That's why I have to pretend I'm not liking this, but it's kind of fun, and what would I be doing otherwise?

• 41:57Speaker 06

  And they also, later, at certain points, John said, oh, Brian Epstein made us wear suits. Paul said, only forced us, we all did it, we were happy, it got us on TV. So, there was a lot of revisionism, but that, that happened. But the second thing that happened, that took the, um, bloom off the British media attitude towards The Beatles, was when John leaves his English rose wife, Cynthia, and takes up with an older woman, Asian, from Japan, the country that only twenty years ago, we were at war with.

• 42:29Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 42:30Speaker 06

  And as Lennon, as he said, he went from being John to being Lennon. And that was how he's referred to in the media.

• 42:37Bill Maher?

  That says it all.

• 42:38Speaker 06

  And that was the whole turning point. And since then, a lot of people, Americans are surprised, when you go to, uh, Britain, there isn't the same love in Britain as there is in America for The Beatles. And not just about that.

• 42:52Bill Maher?

  I know that same feeling, not nearly, of course, on the scale that he, I know that same feeling, exactly. When you see the, the subtle little things writers can do to indicate that they're not on your side, they don't like you, they don't get you, and it's, it's okay, but it's, it's tedious and it's unprofessional.

• 43:09Speaker 06

  Yeah. McCartney was always attuned to this. I was working with McCartney on something, and I, you never forget the first time Paul McCartney tells you off. You really don't, because you're embarrassed. I'm saying this, this is, when McCartney tells you off, you get really upset.

• 43:27Bill Maher?

  Why? Because he told you off?

• 43:28Speaker 06

  You did.

• 43:29Bill Maher?

  Oh, shit. About what?

• 43:30Speaker 06

  And it turned out, he was right. Um, I was working with, with him on one of his projects, and around that time, I'd recently produced the DVD edition of A Hard Day's Night. So I thought, wouldn't it be cool, on the exact fortieth anniversary, to have a cast and crew reunion, and get together all the people, because I got all of the, the actors, the director, everybody together, and Paul came along. I thought, this is gonna be great. And it was a private viewing theatre, and Paul comes in, and he does that thing that people at that level always do, which is, I might not stay, you know, because he wants an out, in case it's a disaster.

• 44:08Bill Maher?

  Can't blame him.

• 44:09Speaker 06

  He was the last person to leave, he's there six hours.

• 44:12Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 44:12Speaker 06

  Because everybody that was there were people he hadn't seen for forty years.

• 44:17Bill Maher?

  I love that story. Not, not just because it's, it's great, and you tell it great, and it's, it's, you know, again, makes us kind of love them in that way, I was talking about. It's not just the music, it's the kind of people that are, don't give you the ick, and, you know, I, I've heard snob stories about him, but the snob part is, is not that, it's what he, I might have to, I, I, the thing he said to you at the beginning, people will, like, who want to be negative, will concentrate on that, as opposed to, like, the other part.

• 44:48Speaker 06

  Who was the most important person to The Beatles on the set of A Hard Day's Night?

• 44:55Bill Maher?

  The, uh, Indian dude who Ringo steals the ring off of, because that's the friggin' plot of the movie.

• 45:02Speaker 06

  Woody's stuff is really potent, because that's hell, but, um.

• 45:06Bill Maher?

  Which movie now, when we're talking?

• 45:07Speaker 06

  Hard Day's Night. I would say the most important person on this, the most important person on the set was Betty Glazow. Who's that, you say? She was the hairdresser. They didn't care about the director. Betty was the woman who did their hair, and I managed to find her.

• 45:23Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 45:23Speaker 06

  And Paul was blown away, he hadn't seen her for forty years, so that was, it was a cool party. But I made one error at that party. I'd invited two journalists from the top end, the broadsheets, the equivalent of the New York Times, Washington Post, the fancy ones, and Paul said to me, who are those people? I said, oh, that's all right, they're just a couple of journalists from, I don't know. And I said, really? He said, yeah. They'll, they'll knock it. I said, really? Because I was thinking I was doing a good favour, that it would be, you know, this great anniversary. But he was, he was right.

• 45:55Bill Maher?

  I can, I agree.

• 45:56Speaker 06

  And I, at the time, at the time, I thought, he's crazy. Two, a week later, I'll come thinking, what a boring film, it's in black and white, The Beatles can't act, the songs are terrible. And I went to Paul, I said, you, you're right, I apologize. He, he accepted the apology, but he instinctively knew, that zeitgeist, omelette that he has, that, yep, the British media have not finished trashing The Beatles. They're, they're so regretful, they were, they.

• 46:23Bill Maher?

  It's not like The Beatles have not gotten some good press.

• 46:26Speaker 06

  No, no, no.

• 46:27Bill Maher?

  I think The Beatles have gotten some good press. And then there are haters, there always are, for everybody, they just prove that there is literally no one too big, and in fact, when you are big, that's exactly when you're a bigger and better target for them. Um, better to take down a whale, and they do, but, I mean, they, first of all, it's, again, what are you saying, sixty-nine years on?

• 46:51Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 46:52Bill Maher?

  I mean, it's, it's settled law, uh, it's settled science, they're popular, they will be forever, and the songs, you know, the music is great, even for people who are not like us, who have this sort of emotional attachment, because of this idea of how they conducted themselves, and never made us regret admiring them. Um, fairly normal, when you consider how big a stars they were. I mean, yes, divorce, uh, they all got divorced, not Paul, um, had second and third wives, because he was a widower. Um, but fairly normal, and the marriages, the second marriages lasted, you know, it, they never sort of

• 47:37Bill Maher?

  had it in their head that they were better, even though they were way better than us.

• 47:41Speaker 06

  It's certainly at music.

• 47:45Speaker 06

  The acid test, I don't know if it's an acid test for you. The acid test for me is how people at that level behave when they're not being watched, when there's no media, when there's nothing in it for them to be nice. I, Paul hired me to do a film, he'd made a documentary called The Real, uh, The Buddy Holly Story.

• 48:02Bill Maher?

  Is this before or after you pissed him off?

• 48:04Speaker 06

  Before.

• 48:05Bill Maher?

  Kind of big, figure that.

• 48:07Speaker 06

  And he's, we made a, with The Real Buddy Holly Story. He made a great documentary about Buddy Holly, because he bought the Irish catalog.

• 48:14Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 48:14Speaker 06

  And he asked me to make a, a little promotional film about Buddy Holly and his passion for it. And I did that, and I left the room at one point, and I came back in the room, he was chatting to the most junior person on my crew. He didn't have to, he was asking him serious questions about it. He didn't have to, he didn't know why.

• 48:34Bill Maher?

  He's, uh, he's got a humanity, look at all the songs he wrote that are about chicks he feels bad for. Like, he has a, a, a plethora of songs that are just like, oh, this is Lady Madonna and what she's going through, and remember the first single? What was the first single after he was solo?

• 48:58Speaker 06

  Um, oh, Another Day.

• 49:00Bill Maher?

  Correct. Another Day. In the morning, she wets her hair, it's just another day, and then she meets a guy at work, and it looks like it's gonna be something, but he does, no, it's not. It's just another day. He's not gonna be a great love affair. It's, I mean, Eleanor Rigby, lovely Rita, the Desmond's wife, and what she's going through with the band. Like, it never fucking ends with this guy. He's just always, like, channeling women, and there's something.

• 49:32Speaker 06

  And it wasn't just, it wasn't just women, though. It was interesting, it raised the things. Now we're moving out of the sixties, so slightly into the early seventies, for those who think we're just stuck in the sixties. So.

• 49:42Bill Maher?

  No, there's another, he did one in ninety-five. Do you know the song Mistress and Maid?

• 49:48Speaker 06

  Go ahead, no.

• 49:48Bill Maher?

  Oh, look, I win one point.

• 49:50Speaker 06

  Yes, certainly do.

• 49:51Bill Maher?

  Okay, the judges have to mark that in round six. I actually scored. Mistress and Maid was on the nineteen ninety-five album Off the Ground.

• 50:00Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 50:01Bill Maher?

  I feel like there are three terrific songs on it. Like, I'm not gonna say every song, uh, at all in the solo career, but it's the, a crazy amount of good songs in the solo career. But you gotta pick like three off each album, and then they're awesome. And one of them is Mistress and Maid, and that's another one. Like, she's, you know, I'm not just your mistress and maid. It's, it's very chatty of women, more than most male songwriters.

• 50:29Speaker 06

  But the thing that, the thing that caused part of the divide in the family, in the Beatles fan family in the early seventies, was this notion, totally wrong and totally unfair, that Paul was somehow middle of the road, and John was some wonderful hero. And, and partly, I realize, I look back on it, I understand what it was. John took the path of autobiographical songs. He was, and that whole singer-songwriter movement came up at that time. And that was considered authentic. And Paul was writing story songs, and that was somehow seen as less authentic. And I look at it this way. John was a diar, John was a diarist. Paul was a dramatist. He told interesting stories about people's lives.

• 51:13Bill Maher?

  The fool on the hill.

• 51:14Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 51:14Bill Maher?

  What's, what's, what's it going on with them? I, I always thought that was a creepy song, because it's like, they know what he wants to do. Really? What, what, well, what do, what do people say that about? What, what does the fool on the hill wanna do? Because, you know, he knows, what does he know? He knows when they're looking.

• 51:36Speaker 06

  But, you know what? The words rhymed. That was, that's probably the deep significance of it, the words rhymed.

• 51:42Bill Maher?

  They had a number of lyrics that, of course, in today's oversensitive world, and the way they do not very often want to just understand that people were different in the past. And if you lived then, you would have been just like them. You're not morally superior.

• 51:58Speaker 06

  Can't look at it through today's prism.

• 52:01Bill Maher?

  But they have some lyrics that would totally be problematic, including, um, "You can't do that," which is like, is like right on the, when you go to the Taliban hotel, it's like on the towel. You can't do that.

• 52:16Speaker 06

  Run for your life, I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than see you with another man.

• 52:19Bill Maher?

  That is not gonna win you the now man of the year award. Correct. Right, "I'd rather see you dead than to be with another man."

• 52:28Speaker 06

  Just segue for a moment.

• 52:30Bill Maher?

  But that was nineteen sixty-two.

• 52:32Speaker 06

  Six, well, sixty-five.

• 52:33Bill Maher?

  Well, whatever, whatever it was.

• 52:35Speaker 06

  Long point back.

• 52:36Bill Maher?

  I always say, you know what? If, if it's so horrible, then you also have to indict every single person who lived back then, who was listening to it, never thought twice about it, didn't do anything about it, liberal, conservative, they just, it's what the world was.

• 52:53Speaker 06

  Here's something, you.

• 52:54Bill Maher?

  We got better, be happy about it.

• 52:56Speaker 06

  I remember you had, on my Beatles radio show, the reason I have to apologize for you is it was nine in the morning on a Saturday morning, and I'd forgotten to tell you that's how early it was, that you had to show up at the studio. You did show up, and you were very cool about it. You were not, not happy to show up at nine AM.

• 53:13Bill Maher?

  That sure sounds like me, but I have to tell you, I, boy, there's lots of stuff I've done in the past like this. Don't be offended.

• 53:21Speaker 06

  No, I'm not offended.

• 53:22Bill Maher?

  Shows that I, uh, I, I had to look at, had to, or, yeah, had to, and kinda wanted to look at this, uh, two thousand and eight Mark Twain Award. I was a guest speaker on it with George Carlin. I had no memory of doing it. I, I, it's amazing what, uh, you know, disc full sometimes. It's amazing what your mind, what your mind.

• 53:45Speaker 06

  But let me remind you then of something you said that was really interesting. We were talking about, we were talking, we were talking.

• 53:54Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 53:54Speaker 06

  Two, that's a second.

• 53:55Bill Maher?

  We gotta talk about that song.

• 53:57Speaker 06

  Okay, we will come to that in a second. On the show, what I was talking about was how the Beatles dealt with the media. And I played you an audio clip of Paul talking about taking LSD. And he's, it's nineteen sixty-seven, and he's doorstepped by a journalist and asks point-blank, "Have you taken LSD?" And he has a split second, he could lie, or he could say, "You know what? I'm not gonna lie to you, I'm gonna tell you the truth, but you don't need to play this. You don't need to spread this, it's not world-shattering news. I'm just gonna be honest with you." Which I'm sure he regretted doing that, because they then emblazoned it everywhere. McCartney takes drugs, and the Beatles, and all of that.

• 54:37Bill Maher?

  McCartney did take drugs. He was a huge pothead, and I love him for it.

• 54:42Speaker 06

  It wasn't known in April sixty, in April sixty-seven, that was front-page news in Britain.

• 54:46Bill Maher?

  No, but there was, Rolling Stone did an article a couple of years ago. Now, it was a, one of those, um, this is the narrative we wanna get you to believe, which is how to, it was not a stupid theory. I think they overplayed it because they wanted us to believe the narrative, which was that LSD was actually a huge factor in their breakup, because George and John did it together at, for the first time.

• 55:16Speaker 06

  Dentist party.

• 55:17Bill Maher?

  Yeah, the dentist, the famous dentist party. And forever were kind of locked in together. Now, which is, again, so strange that George, you know, living with good and bad, and I'm not gonna even mention your biography, but at one point, apparently, he, and maybe it's because they were so locked in then, and then it changed, that there was this later bitterness, but, uh, that, and Paul wouldn't do it.

• 55:44Speaker 06

  Initially, initially, and then, and then.

• 55:46Bill Maher?

  Yeah, he did it right. But, I mean, I can see how a drug that powerful, which everyone who's done it will always say the same thing, and it's always true with any drug, really. It's like, you have to do it, you can't explain it. If you haven't done it, you just don't get it, and that's not your fault. You just, it's one of those things. And so when Paul didn't, it sort of was a rift, which, you know, again, trying to make the story fit, manifested later on when three of them had the same manager, and he had a different manager, which was his father-in-law.

• 56:17Speaker 06

  Yes. I, listen, that was such an insane period. I still think the biggest, the reason why, you know, I've, I love the Beatles equally, but I love John a little more, I guess. Um, and for me, the reason for that was that John Lennon was, created such fear in the most powerful man in the world at that time, Richard Nixon, that they tried to deport him. And the fact that they thought that he might do well, which I doubt it would have had any impact.

• 56:52Bill Maher?

  I, I, I don't think he struck fear into Nixon. I don't think Nixon thought it was John Lennon who was gonna take him down. But it didn't help that this guy, who had the ear of the younger generation, was talking shit about him, and 'cause he was Nixon and a sneaky guy, he, he set the, um, organs of government that he could set on John Lennon. But I doubt if he was getting a report on that every day.

• 57:15Speaker 06

  It wasn't, no, no, the point was that they thought.

• 57:17Bill Maher?

  Watergate, that was a big deal in his life.

• 57:19Speaker 06

  Sure, but I, I don't think it would have made any difference, but Lennon was talking about going on tour before the nineteen seventy-two election. But I don't think it would have affected the election.

• 57:29Bill Maher?

  I love John Lennon too, but he also is, is a, a real myth-maker of his own myth.

• 57:37Speaker 06

  Is there a better time?

• 57:39Bill Maher?

  Well, uh, uh, but, like, he, um, sort of purported to be the working-class hero. We all know, like, no, he, among the four Beatles, the other three were lower class. He was the only one with a little more of a, a nice house. Yes, he lived with the aunt instead of the mother, but, like, it was, uh, you know, we know neighborhoods, like I lived in, middle, middle class. There were houses that were nicer. It was just like that. He wasn't really a working-class hero. Of course, their early days were rough and tumble for, for everybody, but, um, and then.

• 58:16Speaker 06

  You're right, you're right.

• 58:18Bill Maher?

  The materialism. You know the Elvis Costello song, "The Other Side of Summer"?

• 58:22Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 58:23Bill Maher?

  One of my favorite, oh, man, I love that Elvis Costello. But is there, was it a millionaire who said, "Imagine no possessions"? A poor little schoolboy who said, "We don't need no lessons." That's, that's Pink Floyd he's hitting. So we got John Lennon and Pink Floyd in the same line.

• 58:40Speaker 06

  Well.

• 58:41Bill Maher?

  Boom.

• 58:41Speaker 06

  Boom. Okay, I would say this, first of all, um, uh, it's a minutia of class strat, but funny enough, there was a hierarchy within the Beatles. Um, George and Ringo are true working class. Paul wasn't working class, he wasn't middle, he was lower-middle class. I mean, that's the kind of craziness of the British class system. But John, yeah, he was middle class. He's, he grew up in a beautiful, comfortable home, and had books, and the, you know. But what he wanted to do, the biggest thing he wanted to do, was to become working class, because it was seen as more cred, more authentic.

• 59:17Bill Maher?

  We're saying the same thing.

• 59:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, sure.

• 59:19Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I'm saying it's a little, kinda being a bullshit artist.

• 59:22Speaker 06

  Do you think, do you think Jagger is working class?

• 59:27Bill Maher?

  Certainly not now.

• 59:29Speaker 06

  Well, wasn't it, let me tell you what he was. He, no, he never was. He was Mike Jagger. Mick is a working-class name. He was Mike Jagger, and he went to the London School of Economics. But he, you know people take elocution lessons. Mick Jagger's delocution.

• 59:48Speaker 06

  He just wanted to say, alright, yeah, well, like, if you spoke to Mick Jagger, or Mike Jagger as he was, oh, hello, well, listen, I rather like this blues music, you know. He just thought, because that was what you did in the sixties.

• 1:00:01Bill Maher?

  It reminds me of that great SNL sketch where I think it was Fred Armisen played the Queen, and when it was in public and they had visitors, she spoke the perfect English. And then as soon as they left the room, and she was alone with Prince Philip, she was with the scouts, with the heavy, you know, vulgar, you know.

• 1:00:20Speaker 06

  The British, I mean, a lot, so much of the British stuff is written, and the Beatles, is written with all that class stuff. It's written with it.

• 1:00:27Bill Maher?

  I always have thought of the Sergeant Pepper album more than anything. I mean, I've heard it was a drug album. Yeah, they were on drugs at the time, that's why it's good. Lots of, I always saw it as a tribute to England, more than other albums. I mean, English, of course, seeps into all their music, their English. I feel like in that one, some of it is deliberate and some of it, I just think it turned into that. It was supposed to be a thing about their childhood, but their childhood was in England. So, like Strawberry Fields, Penny Lane, very English, the details in all of it. You really understand what it's like to live in England.

• 1:01:10Bill Maher?

  Lovely Rita, the meter maid, that Victorian soap opera of she's leaving home. Everything just seems to point to this love letter to England, not, of course, Within You Without You, that's a love letter to India.

• 1:01:24Speaker 06

  Okay, but actually, actually.

• 1:01:26Bill Maher?

  We have to talk about that song.

• 1:01:28Speaker 06

  All the musicians were Indian, British Indians, who he met at curry houses in, going, have, go. But you are, I'm going to give you 10 points for that because you're spot on. Here's the interesting, the Beatles, the Beatles, in their own lyrics, there was a few references to America in their earlier records, but they're all cover songs like Kansas City. But there's no references to geography, they don't talk about geography in their early songs. Sergeant Pepper is exactly what you say. It's, it's a very, it's their last English album, it's very Edwardian, it's all about the class.

• 1:02:01Bill Maher?

  It's, it's, right, it's just, it's just English.

• 1:02:05Speaker 06

  Right, and the next year.

• 1:02:06Bill Maher?

  I love it.

• 1:02:07Speaker 06

  When you get to Magical Mystery Tour, which is late six, seven, it's, there's a fog up on LA. There's bungalow builders, uh, you know.

• 1:02:16Bill Maher?

  Right, they'd been to India.

• 1:02:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, and there's India, and there's Hollywood, and, you know, you know, honey pie.

• 1:02:22Bill Maher?

  I just.

• 1:02:22Speaker 06

  But you're right, it's about England.

• 1:02:25Bill Maher?

  Except for the opening of Side Two, of course, that was the days when we turned the record over.

• 1:02:30Speaker 06

  It was the Raj, that's, that's the Raj, the British own India in that.

• 1:02:35Speaker 07

  Bush Light is as cold and smooth as a mountain stream.

• 1:02:41Speaker 07

  Sounds refreshing, doesn't it? Head for the mountains of Bush. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Sennheiser Bush, Bush Light Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 1:02:51Speaker 05

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• 1:03:19Bill Maher?

  I'm not going to slam that song, Within You Without You, I'm just going to say two things. One, I feel that as opening songs of Side Two go,

• 1:03:32Bill Maher?

  Here Comes the Sun definitely beats Within You Without You. And, uh, also, what was my other important thing about that song? Oh, I noticed that when it came time for George Harrison to do his solo album,

• 1:03:54Bill Maher?

  suddenly there was none of that Within You Without You, Inner Light bullshit on that record. It was just great rock songs. I'm not saying that he kind of like.

• 1:04:02Speaker 06

  There were a few philosophical, but the point taken.

• 1:04:04Bill Maher?

  No, no, that was, that, I mean, that's an amazing album, all things must pass.

• 1:04:09Speaker 06

  There was a few philosophical things about the art of dying.

• 1:04:12Bill Maher?

  Philosophical, but not the music.

• 1:04:13Speaker 06

  Okay, he didn't, he wasn't, he, he went through phases, they borrowed from everybody.

• 1:04:16Bill Maher?

  Well, he went through one big phase, uh, early on, which was spiritual. I mean, a lot of his songs, not my favorite lyrics, sometimes the song was worthy of forgetting the lyrics. I don't care about lyrics. If they're good, it's better, but if they're not, I don't give a shit. My sweet Lord, not exactly how I see the world, don't care, love the song. Phil Spector, great job, crazy person, shot a girl, okay, that's all bad, I should not listen to this song.

• 1:04:43Speaker 06

  I did, I did.

• 1:04:44Bill Maher?

  Because you shot an actor.

• 1:04:45Speaker 06

  When Paul did that thing, what was it, you know, the Let It Be Naked thing?

• 1:04:49Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:50Speaker 06

  And he went back, because he was like, they were, he really hated what Phil Spector did.

• 1:04:53Bill Maher?

  I could not disagree more.

• 1:04:55Speaker 06

  I know, because you told me how much you liked the original Let It Be.

• 1:04:58Bill Maher?

  I, I like them both, but what Phil Spector did to Let It Be was what should have been done to Let It Be. This, this is pop music, okay? This is for people like me, I'm just the young man in the 22nd row, okay?

• 1:05:14Bill Maher?

  I just want to be entertained in, in as elegant a way as you can.

• 1:05:18Speaker 06

  Okay, I'm going to step in on that briefly, only because George Martin put orchestrations, he was not trying to put orchestrations, but they weren't schlocky.

• 1:05:29Bill Maher?

  These aren't schlocky either.

• 1:05:31Speaker 06

  On Let It Be, it's over the top.

• 1:05:32Bill Maher?

  The Long and Winding Road is awesome because of the production. It calls for it, it makes it better, it's not schlocky. And, you know, first of all, this is the kind of thing, it's like when somebody says to me, why do you hate mustard? Why do you hate any food? Who the fuck knows? I like this, somebody else doesn't. It's like how, it's how our ears hear it, there's no right or wrong.

• 1:05:58Speaker 06

  Can I say for the record, I hate cilantro?

• 1:06:02Speaker 06

  By the way, you've probably confused all the young, young folks. Side Two, what the hell's Side Two? People are screaming.

• 1:06:09Bill Maher?

  They know what, the young, are you kidding, they're buying LPs again.

• 1:06:12Speaker 06

  Okay, that's.

• 1:06:12Bill Maher?

  LPs are very hip now.

• 1:06:13Speaker 06

  But the thing is, when, when Paul did that Let It Be Naked, I mean, is that, that's like, you know, George Lucas going back and revisiting a film, and, you know, and some people, fans get upset that you revisit and change Star Wars. But the thing, the thing.

• 1:06:27Bill Maher?

  Like, I love the Beatles, but I, I, you know, I'm not idolatrous, because I don't think they would want it. And also because they have a higher percentage of everything than other bands, I think. But still, like, like, I don't have every, uh, in, in my collection of Beatles songs, it's not every one.

• 1:06:49Speaker 06

  I know.

• 1:06:50Bill Maher?

  What, what, what do you think would happen if you put out an album? I swear to God, Apple put out something called Worst of the Beatles. I bet you it would still go to number one.

• 1:07:01Bill Maher?

  Worst of the Beatles.

• 1:07:02Speaker 06

  But here's the thing about.

• 1:07:03Bill Maher?

  What would be on it?

• 1:07:03Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:07:06Bill Maher?

  Revolution number nine, of course, I mean, you can't.

• 1:07:10Speaker 06

  You'd have to be in a very special mood to listen to that track.

• 1:07:13Bill Maher?

  Excuse me, what are you, a fucking hate geographer?

• 1:07:17Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:07:17Bill Maher?

  Worst of the Beatles.

• 1:07:19Speaker 06

  The worst of the Beatles.

• 1:07:19Bill Maher?

  What is, uh, what are the 12 tracks on this album? Uh, Revolution number nine, it's, it's not.

• 1:07:26Speaker 06

  What Goes On, not a great song.

• 1:07:29Bill Maher?

  Absolutely.

• 1:07:30Speaker 06

  Um, Tip of My Tongue, which they finally put on Anthology.

• 1:07:33Bill Maher?

  Don't even know it.

• 1:07:34Speaker 06

  I know you don't.

• 1:07:35Bill Maher?

  No, I'm talking about just.

• 1:07:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, but there were a few.

• 1:07:38Bill Maher?

  Not Anthology, I'm talking about stuff they actually put out.

• 1:07:40Speaker 06

  Okay, but.

• 1:07:40Bill Maher?

  Honey Don't.

• 1:07:42Speaker 06

  I didn't, I'm not a big fan of their covers. They did covers, they did them very well.

• 1:07:46Bill Maher?

  Some were great.

• 1:07:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, Twisted Chap.

• 1:07:48Bill Maher?

  Please, Mr. Postman.

• 1:07:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, but I, I was, I was so happy when they got to, Hard Day Tonight is the first real album when they wrote all their own songs.

• 1:07:56Bill Maher?

  They did 18 covers.

• 1:07:57Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:07:57Bill Maher?

  I like, like, some of them that were B-sides, like Mr. Moonlight, I love, because it's just a virtuoso sort of singing performance. John Lennon did have an emotional quality in his voice that is very.

• 1:08:12Speaker 06

  That came about, those selections of those songs from their early days, they were competitive with all the other groups, and they were always trying to find obscurities that no one else knew. So Mr. Moonlight was the B-side of a song.

• 1:08:24Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:25Speaker 06

  And they discovered it, and they did, and then all the other groups in Liverpool started copying, that's just the way it went. But still, I still think that when they found their muse as writers, to me, that's, that's probably the, the best contribution. And I think it's the part that engages with people most, and they, I can't stress too much. I don't think there was ever any manifesto, there was no game plan, they never sat down to conquer the world or anything like that.

• 1:08:52Bill Maher?

  Is anybody in, in their life? Life, isn't it John Lennon himself, who said, life is what happens when you're busy making other plans?

• 1:09:00Speaker 06

  Sadly, sadly because.

• 1:09:03Bill Maher?

  I love the, I love philosophy songs like that, like, there's some songs are about, you know, just a love story, I love you, or you left me and my heart's breaking, and then there's just like philosophy songs that, you know, like, Barado, you know.

• 1:09:19Speaker 06

  But, but here's the other thing.

• 1:09:21Bill Maher?

  The Queen of Hearts, Queen of Diamonds.

• 1:09:24Speaker 06

  Here's, here's the difference, and people talk about this thing about, you know, at, at that time, there was the Beatles, there was the thing, there was the Beatles Stones thing that was a big thing at that time, you know, rivalry between.

• 1:09:36Bill Maher?

  They still report in the tabloids when Mick or Paul says something snarky and snipy about each other. I love it.

• 1:09:45Speaker 06

  When Paul, when.

• 1:09:46Bill Maher?

  They're both 84, I think, and, um, like, Paul said something about, they were, and it wasn't untrue a few years ago, like, they were really just a blues cover band or something.

• 1:10:01Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:10:01Bill Maher?

  And it's true, their, their range is more limited. Not that the Rolling Stones didn't put out some great ballads, they could do it all, especially when they had Brian Jones in there. It was very creative back then, they're, the Stones 60s singles are nothing to sneeze about.

• 1:10:16Speaker 06

  They are absolutely awesome. But the, the interesting thing is, in that rivalry, was that there was, some of it was class and geography. When the Stones finally first meet the Beatles, the Beatles are from the north, which is, we look down in the south. I mean, you're in Hard Day Tonight, Ringo's on the towpath, and the policeman, he's angry with the policeman, and Ringo yells, Savannah, because of that thing, the difference.

• 1:10:40Bill Maher?

  The one with the ring.

• 1:10:43Speaker 06

  Take away that one point again. Um, but, um, the Stones.

• 1:10:47Bill Maher?

  Yeah, Help is an Elvis movie. It is. It's an Elvis movie.

• 1:10:51Speaker 06

  It's a, yes, cartoon. It's a cartoon.

• 1:10:53Bill Maher?

  You travel to an exotic locale. It's just, the difference is that with one guy doing that kind of movie, you always can have a love interest. With four, what's the love interest?

• 1:11:05Speaker 06

  But here's the.

• 1:11:05Bill Maher?

  Too many girls.

• 1:11:06Speaker 06

  Here's the interesting point was that the Beatles, when you think, we have to understand the difference between the Beatles and the Stones was the sense of humor of the Beatles. You look at them, how many photos of the Stones with a big smile on their face? They had to be serious, sullen.

• 1:11:19Bill Maher?

  No doubt about it. The Beatles were the good boys and the, and the Stones were bad boys. And that is exactly what their appeal was. It was like, like to the forty percent of teenagers who are looking for a snarling face to put on how they feel about how shitty life is with adults ruling everything. The Stones were perfect.

• 1:11:42Speaker 06

  You're a hundred percent correct and wrong at the same time. Because that was the brilliance of their manager, Andrew Lou Golden, who was actually younger than all the Stones. He had just done some PR work on the Beatles in early sixty-three. He happened upon the Stones and he, that's light bulb goes off and he thinks, oh, there needs to be an anti-Beatles. They're too cuddly. Mums and dads like the Beatles. And he fashioned the Stones to be the anti-Beatles. The irony, as Lennon claimed, was that the Stones were actually rather nice, decent, middle-class boys who were roughed up by their manager to look snarling. The Beatles, John Lennon's line was, we were the biggest bastards of them all. So they were actually.

• 1:12:21Bill Maher?

  It is astounding the way the media not only often get it wrong, they get it diametrically wrong.

• 1:12:29Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 1:12:29Bill Maher?

  The absolute, same thing happened to Elvis when he was first on the scene. They thought he was the devil. They wouldn't shoot him above the hips, remember?

• 1:12:39Speaker 06

  Right, of course.

• 1:12:40Bill Maher?

  Because he was just such a bad influence. That's when he was actually a sweet young boy who was overwhelmed by success, but was really kind and loved his mother who was still alive. He wasn't on drugs. He wasn't involved with teenagers. That's when they said he was the devil. Later on, when he was, you know, doing things like having a fourteen-year-old live at his house and on drugs, that's when he was sort of exalted as like, because, you know, if you hang around long enough, you become an institution.

• 1:13:09Speaker 06

  Became exactly.

• 1:13:10Bill Maher?

  So they had it exactly wrong.

• 1:13:12Speaker 06

  But what I love with, with the Beatles in their films, the Beatles, uh, not just their films, but also their Christmas records for their fan club. They were always, they were influenced by The Goon Show. Now, The Goon Show was the British radio predecessor of Monty Python. It was the comedy of Peter Sellers and others. And that was what inspired Monty Python and inspired the Beatles. They, this is that first famous thing with George Martin. George Martin had never produced a rock and roll record. He didn't know anything about it. Why did they respect him? He's twelve or thirteen years older, which is a big age gap when you're twenty. Oh, this old guy.

• 1:13:48Bill Maher?

  Cause he was the only one who wanted them.

• 1:13:49Speaker 06

  Not just that, but they liked him.

• 1:13:51Bill Maher?

  Well, that's big.

• 1:13:52Speaker 06

  That is part, no, but why they liked him was that he produced.

• 1:13:57Bill Maher?

  Yeah, yes.

• 1:13:58Speaker 06

  And they, and Peter, probably more. They loved that he'd done comedy.

• 1:14:01Bill Maher?

  No, this, I mean, you cannot overestimate the, how much the cheekiness of the Beatles on their first trip to this country. I mean, that is something even as an eight-year-old I got was that, oh, these guys, it's not just the music, uh, which I again, don't care about because baseball, but, uh, they kind of, they're like, of course, as many people have compared them to that Marx Brothers quality. And just cheeky, funny, witty, the kind of thing that comes through the blood of my people, Celtic people, you know, like the British Isles, the Irish Isles.

• 1:14:37Speaker 06

  We embrace, we embrace you as almost one of ours.

• 1:14:40Bill Maher?

  Poetic people and funny people or usually witty people. And they were in that, you know, they were more, I mean, like John certainly was. He saw, saw himself as a Celtic. He did that album, a horrible album, horrible, called Sometime in New York City. And there was this song on it called, If You Had the Luck of the.

• 1:15:00Speaker 06

  Luck of the Irish.

• 1:15:01Bill Maher?

  You'd be sorry and wish you were dead. Okay, you know, it was, it was, that was, see again, they never did anything that makes me feel icky, but they did missteps. It was nineteen seventy-two. He and Yoko had, you know, finally got free of that horrible island, England, and gotten to New York and they're living in New York on the west side in a big fucking bomb of an apartment with the whole floor that they owned just to put shit that they didn't, this is Elvis.

• 1:15:31Speaker 06

  They weren't in there, they weren't in there, yeah, that was later in the Dakota. They're in the village, they're in a small place in the village.

• 1:15:36Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah, that's right.

• 1:15:37Speaker 06

  But they're getting infatuated with Abby Hoffman and Joey Woo.

• 1:15:40Bill Maher?

  Infatuated with the revolutionary spirit. Nixon was president, Batman, Wes. Okay, I get it, we were there. And, uh, so they put out this protest record. I mean, he obviously thought he was Dylan, but the songs were just, it reminds me of that movie, Walk Hard, where they're doing that Dylan sequence and he's singing a song for midgets and they're right, it's very funny.

• 1:16:02Speaker 06

  But he bounced, but then he bounced back. And he, he, he did Walls and Bridges, he did Mind Games. He bounced back.

• 1:16:08Bill Maher?

  Walls and Bridges and Mind Games are not great solo albums.

• 1:16:11Speaker 06

  They're not great solo, but there are good songs on them.

• 1:16:13Bill Maher?

  There are some good songs, but I only have fifteen Lennon songs. Now again, that's because he took five years off. But, um, uh, you know, the ones that are good are amazing. Starting, it's nice to know that his last one is maybe my favorite of all time, Starting Over. Again, Phil Spector, gotta give you props on that one. Should not have shot that girl. Let me say that again.

• 1:16:37Speaker 06

  Except that was.

• 1:16:38Bill Maher?

  You should not have shot that girl, but the wall of sound, reverb on that, the production on that is so immaculate.

• 1:16:44Speaker 06

  It was Jack Douglas who produced it, but no matter.

• 1:16:47Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:16:47Speaker 06

  Yes, sadly it was, yes.

• 1:16:48Bill Maher?

  That's not Phil Spector? Well, they learned it from Phil Spector.

• 1:16:51Speaker 06

  You could say homage to Phil Spector.

• 1:16:53Bill Maher?

  This guy sounds like the poor man's Phil Spector.

• 1:16:56Speaker 06

  It has, it has that.

• 1:16:58Bill Maher?

  Who is, who produced that?

• 1:16:59Speaker 06

  Jack Douglas, who was a terrific guy who worked with Aerosmith and, um, he'd, uh, he'd actually, he passed recently, but he, he brought some of that album. There were some beautiful songs, but is there anything, woman? Here's the line, when you were talking about Jealous Guy, um, first of all, Jealous Guy and Woman.

• 1:17:19Bill Maher?

  Right, right.

• 1:17:20Speaker 06

  In Jealous Guy, how many macho, macho men didn't say things like, I, I didn't mean to hurt you, I'm just a jealous guy. You didn't own up to jealousy and help, help saying.

• 1:17:31Bill Maher?

  Plainly he didn't because we talked about it. He had a song that says, I'd rather see you dead, little girl.

• 1:17:37Speaker 06

  But he also had, he also had a song that said, every now and then I feel so insecure. A grown man did not, macho guys did not admit to insecurity.

• 1:17:45Bill Maher?

  It's a great arc to go, if you were writing a screenplay or looking for character arcs and development to go from, I'd rather see you dead to the lyrics of Jealous Guy, which are very self-aware and talking about who he is. I'm just a jealous guy.

• 1:18:02Speaker 06

  And isn't the essence of him in that song, Woman, where he says, I know you understand, little child. Yeah. That's it, he's starting to get, he's starting to understand.

• 1:18:13Bill Maher?

  No doubt that Yoko had, had a hold on him. I, I'm not a Yoko basher and I'm sure that there was elements of that that were completely real. And then there's some stuff that I didn't know that, I mean, I did the review of that book, Hundred and Fifty Glimpses of the Beatles.

• 1:18:32Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:18:32Bill Maher?

  It's one of the, I loved doing that. It was during the pandemic, I had the time, and I wrote a book review for the New York Times of that book. And I mean, at least in that book, he says, I did not realize until I read it, Yoko sent him letters every day when he was in India and would jump in the car. And then he like deadpanned something like, uh, you know, perseverance was her secret weapon.

• 1:18:59Speaker 06

  But this is.

• 1:19:00Bill Maher?

  And I didn't know that, like, the fact that she went after him so hard and that Linda, that, that Linda and Yoko went, first went after the other one. Linda went after John and she went after, is that right?

• 1:19:16Speaker 06

  There's an element of that for sure. Interestingly, I mean, I, I, I think that they were fortunate in the people around them. They were fortunate in the, uh, uh, uh, romantic partners they had. The winner out, but look at this. If the Beatles had been in the clutches of Colonel Tom Parker, we would never have had what they evolved to do because he'd have made them continue to do the same.

• 1:19:38Bill Maher?

  I disagree because Elvis was a sad hillbilly and they're smart, savvy guys and they would never have put up with a Colonel Tom Parker.

• 1:19:46Speaker 06

  Well, okay, but that, that, that's true.

• 1:19:48Bill Maher?

  They're just not Elvisy. I love Elvis, but he was like pure talent and I'm not, not, I wasn't surprised, or I'm not surprised now that he only lived to forty-two. But.

• 1:20:01Speaker 06

  How did you feel about him going to, uh, Nixon and saying the Beatles are un-American? Which the Beatles were most amused by.

• 1:20:09Bill Maher?

  I, I fucking love it. I fucking love this drug addict getting on the plane to the guy who invented the Drug Enforcement Administration, Allstone, wearing the sunglasses, left the house with no money. What is the form of currency, sir? I'm Elvis Presley is my form of currency. Don't you see the cape? And gets to the White House like without an appointment, wearing a cape. Sir, Elvis is at the front gate. Uh, damn, we almost had the Vietnam War, so send them in. Henry, I'll get back to you later, Elvis.

• 1:20:51Bill Maher?

  You're right. It's all just because it's very Trumpian, you know, it's like, I can get away with this. I'm gonna do it. It's a bar fight, I'm gonna pick this up and use it. And man, he wanted to get the Beatles and, you know, you can't blame him. When, when somebody eats your lunch as bad as they did his. Not that he wasn't old news by the time they came along. And I mean, that was his old.

• 1:21:15Speaker 06

  It was, it was, but there was an irony there. Here's the thing. Paul forgave him, he just said, you know, disappointed it happened, but didn't stop loving the music. They upgraded, didn't say, you know, I hate Elvis or anything like that. John was a servant when Elvis died.

• 1:21:32Speaker 06

  Elvis died when he went in the archive.

• 1:21:33Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:34Speaker 06

  This is mine. And.

• 1:21:35Bill Maher?

  Not true. Elvis died for, in a lot of ways, for a long time. The Voice never left him. There's, there's not a lot of great stuff from the, from the eight or nine years when he did movie musicals. Those thirty travelogues he did, they were all the same movie. It was not, but, you know, wise men say, what's that one? That came from.

• 1:21:59Speaker 06

  From the fool's Russia.

• 1:22:00Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah, I mean, he still did that in concert. It's, it's a good ballad, it's not the greatest thing ever.

• 1:22:05Speaker 06

  But no, the thing was, he, he, the point, listen, Elvis couldn't have rebelled against Colonel Tom Parker in the early years. By the time of sixty six, sixty seven, sixty eight, there were artists who did rebel against their managers. They sought a lawyer and got out of the deal. Yeah.

• 1:22:19Bill Maher?

  He was, he was just sad hillbilly who like couldn't figure out how to like break free of his father figure. He's weird because he's, what he was always doing was mourning his mother. He needed a mother figure. He had a father, seemed like a nice guy who kinda went along with everything. How could he not? I mean, you know.

• 1:22:39Speaker 06

  But listen, he had the talent. He inspired at the time when that hit, when that hit in Britain, it made the act. If, if there's no Elvis, there's no Beatles.

• 1:22:48Bill Maher?

  And Elvis had an amazing period when he finally got out of the movie contract, when he was a thirty five year old grown ass man. And he wasn't singing about fucking Hound Dog and all that bullshit. I don't like that music at all. But the music he did from like nineteen sixty nine, Suspicious Minds, through.

• 1:23:07Speaker 06

  In the ghetto, I mean.

• 1:23:09Bill Maher?

  Yes, great songs.

• 1:23:13Bill Maher?

  I don't think before that song Elvis really cared that much about what was going on in the ghetto. I never took those lyrics terribly to heart. You're like, oh, Elvis is.

• 1:23:23Speaker 06

  Here's, you know, something that, it, it also reminds me, that thing where

• 1:23:31Speaker 06

  Paul has sometimes been accused of embellishing or revisiting history. That happens with people, your memories aren't perfect and you revisit and you tell a story. But there was a famous thing that happened when the song Blackbird was being reexamined and being talked about. And Paul gave an interview somewhere where he was talking about Blackbird and said that, you know, Angela Davis was something I was thinking about. And he got pounced on because the.

• 1:23:57Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:23:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, because Angela Davis wasn't known in America or Britain in nineteen sixty eight. She wasn't known till after he wrote that song. So for a year or so, people were pining on Paul and saying, what a bloody hypocrite, he's making it up. And I thought, that's not right, I know it's not right. And I did some delving in the archives and I found a rare audio tape that proved that Paul was telling the truth. In nineteen sixty eight, he did, he produced an album with Mary Hopkin. You remember she did the song called Those Were the Days?

• 1:24:28Bill Maher?

  And he. He went to number one.

• 1:24:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, and he was friends with.

• 1:24:31Bill Maher?

  An old Russian folk song.

• 1:24:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, it is by Gene Raskin. And she, Paul was very friendly at that time with Donovan, who'd been to the, with them to the India, to the Maori sheep.

• 1:24:42Bill Maher?

  What was the follow up single?

• 1:24:44Speaker 06

  Those, The Days of, that Tema Harbour, no, Goodbye.

• 1:24:48Bill Maher?

  Correct, for ten points.

• 1:24:50Speaker 06

  And then Tema Harbour.

• 1:24:51Bill Maher?

  That's a better song than Those Were the Days.

• 1:24:53Speaker 06

  But, but with the, with that thing, so Donovan is, Paul's asked Donovan, can you come up with a song for Mary? So Donovan had written a couple of songs and they're in the studio, I found the audio tape, they're rehearsing. And as they do with their warm up, they're playing each other's songs. So Donovan sings Sunshine Superman, Paul sings Blackbird. And Donovan said, oh, that's the one you were writing in India.

• 1:25:17Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:25:18Speaker 06

  And then Paul says, yeah, I got into trouble with that last night. What are you talking about? And Paul said, I ran into Diana Ross at a club in London. And she started giving him grief about writing a song and using the word bird, which is an English term for a girl, about black women. And so there's Paul talking about it, that it was, and then Paul says, oh, I saw some news footage on TV about these black women protesting in America. So there it was from nineteen sixty eight. Paul did write the song based on that, but he'd been tripped up because he misremembered and threw in Angela Davis's name and that was somehow he was thrown against.

• 1:26:01Bill Maher?

  Well, that's what I call bad faith, which is a lot of that in the media. Bad faith means when you know what the truth is, but you know you can get these dummies to believe this worst thing. And they will, because when people just wanna believe, people have shitty lives and they wanna believe bad things about celebrities. People have good lives, they're not really, not really rooting for that. It's a lot more helpful if you're going through some sort of horrible divorce or a drug addiction or Britney Spears or whatever you're doing that's like sad and terrible. It's like, oh, well, you know, that's, that's what happens when you become a famous pop star. So good on me that I didn't.

• 1:26:43Speaker 06

  I'm talking about, I mean, listen, part of my Beatles fashion is not just the Beatles and that era. It's the answering things, the things they did afterwards. And in particular, I know this firsthand from a couple of perspectives. George Harrison is, you know, people used to mock some of the spirituality, got a little bit pompous sometimes on the spirituality. He was sincere, but, you know, he got a little overblown. He did two things that were really crucial. One, the Concert for Bangladesh. Before then, there had never been.

• 1:27:12Bill Maher?

  Absolutely.

• 1:27:13Speaker 06

  A, a pulling together.

• 1:27:14Bill Maher?

  Groundbreaking. August first nineteen seventy one, kids, look it up.

• 1:27:18Speaker 06

  You did, absolutely. And when I got involved with John Cleese and Monty Python, we did the secret policeman's ball thing. What were we looking at? We were looking at Concert for Bangladesh. Could we do with comedy what he'd done with rock and roll?

• 1:27:30Bill Maher?

  I was fifteen, it was on the front page of the New York Times. Of course, there was no color back then in newspapers. But he was wearing an orange shirt with a white suit. You know, he just looked cool, a beard, hot backup singers behind him, who I'm sure were in love with him. I mean, it was just like, and it was Madison Square Garden and Ringo was behind him playing drums. It was just, for a fifteen year old, it was like one of the, and good cause and, you know, back then they really, we have raised three million dollars. Oh my God, what an ungodly sum.

• 1:28:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, Alan Klein found it hard to live on that.

• 1:28:07Bill Maher?

  But let's talk about solo careers, because.

• 1:28:11Speaker 06

  Sorry, should I finish one, one, one small point and then to the side of the cliff? The other thing he did was he single handedly almost revived the British film industry in the nineteen eighties. It was going to shit and he financed Monty Python's Life of Brian. They, their backers had pulled out. He financed the film, he financed all these other films with Bob Hoskins, Luger, this was great.

• 1:28:33Bill Maher?

  Beatle fans know all this.

• 1:28:34Speaker 06

  No, no, I'm saying, but.

• 1:28:36Bill Maher?

  Talking about what they don't know.

• 1:28:37Speaker 06

  Okay, all right.

• 1:28:38Bill Maher?

  They know these stories.

• 1:28:40Speaker 06

  But, but what, your, your following is way more than just Beatles fans.

• 1:28:44Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but I bet you you have to kinda be Beatle, maybe you're right, maybe that's not true.

• 1:28:50Speaker 06

  I don't think everybody knows everything.

• 1:28:51Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I've just heard these stories, there is lore. I mean, it, it almost, you could see how things like this could become a religion. Same thing with Elvis, you know, it was very similar to, to Jesus, the refulgent life giver, the, the white silk thing. I mean, it was just, and people worship him, some think he's still alive, he was resurrected. So there is all that, but I wanna ask, come on, like, if you had to pick or put in order solo career output, one, two, three.

• 1:29:29Speaker 06

  Well, it's unequal.

• 1:29:31Bill Maher?

  Yeah, of course, of course, we understand John is gonna be third because he died. That just would happen. But, okay, I'll go.

• 1:29:40Speaker 06

  You go, you go.

• 1:29:42Bill Maher?

  Are you their fucking publicist?

• 1:29:43Speaker 06

  I'm not their fucking publicist.

• 1:29:46Bill Maher?

  I would put Paul first because he just has the most, I think, songs, but I don't know, George also has. Like, I don't know, I'm guessing fifty ones that I just love. And I only keep the ones I like. Now, it's uneven. All Things Must Pass, every song? No, but like, boy, there's six or eight that are just great. Most of the uptempo ones, although Beware of Darkness. I mean, boy, talk about a lugubrious toe-tapper, but an amazing song. Like, I mean, I live my life by one rule, Beware of Maya. I don't know what it is, but I'm always on the lookout for it. But it's a great album, and to your point, like, just a lot of spirituality shoved down your throat. I just accept it, it's fine, I don't care.

• 1:30:32Bill Maher?

  I will say this, his last album, I feel, he finally wrote a spiritual song that didn't hit you over the head like the other ones did, and I thought it was his best one. Probably people don't know it, because it's on the last album, and it's called The Rising Sun. Do you know it?

• 1:30:49Speaker 06

  I do know it a little bit, yes.

• 1:30:51Bill Maher?

  It's one of, I just think it's so beautiful, and it's not like all this, you know, right on the table. Remember the one, John and Paul in the material world, living in the material? John and Paul in the material world, like you're not. Like George Harrison, living in his castle, wasn't part of the material world in that fucking awesome place he had.

• 1:31:14Speaker 06

  It, listen, it was awful for all of them, having that wretched, tall shadow of the Beatles. I mean, you have to admire how McCartney got on with a solo career after the Beatles. It was so wretched, it was such a big daunting thing to deal with. And Gormon Wings, which, let's face it, it was really Paul McCartney and his band, but it was, it was the way he chose to deal with it, they all dealt with it in different ways. Did you know that Ringo was the most, initially, in the first two years, was the most successful solo Beatle? He had more hits than the others.

• 1:31:47Bill Maher?

  A lot of hit singles, again, the thing that makes me so emotional about them, the way the other Beatles helped him. George gave him a photograph.

• 1:31:59Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:31:59Bill Maher?

  Right? Or was it It Don't Come Easy?

• 1:32:01Speaker 06

  And It Don't Come Easy, and they worked on together on back off Boogaloo.

• 1:32:04Bill Maher?

  I mean, he wrote, there's a Georgehausen version of It Don't Come Easy. It's a great song, to give away a great song is a great act of kindness. I know John suggested some songs that he did, like You're Sixteen.

• 1:32:17Speaker 06

  And he wrote I'm the Greatest.

• 1:32:19Bill Maher?

  Okay, that's not my thing.

• 1:32:21Speaker 06

  And our mutual friend, Richard Perry, produced that album, The Ringo.

• 1:32:24Bill Maher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:25Speaker 06

  Which was just ridiculous.

• 1:32:26Bill Maher?

  I don't know about that.

• 1:32:27Speaker 06

  Oh, no, it was great pop.

• 1:32:28Bill Maher?

  It was, it was. Yeah, I, I, look, can I tell you what I, I mean, there, there was a good song at the end that I liked, had for a long time, For You and Me Babe, and then there's John here, and he thanks everybody at the end. It's a lot of talking on the record, so it kinda had to go. But, no, he's got some, I mean, there's a song, he did a tribute song for John, for George, called Never Without You. Never Without, that song is a killer, make you cry, it's a, and it's interesting. He did a tribute song to George, George did a tribute song to John,

• 1:33:11Bill Maher?

  Paul did a tribute song to John, but, but who didn't? And Ringo did a tribute song to George, but not to John. It's interesting that by the tribute songs, we can read between the lines.

• 1:33:28Speaker 06

  You seem to be quite a Beatles fan there, you really know your stuff.

• 1:33:31Bill Maher?

  Well, the, the, the Paul McCartney tribute song is called Here Today.

• 1:33:35Speaker 06

  Here Today is one of McCartney's finest songs, it's pure emotion, the, the essence of it, the way that he wrote it, the construction of it. He did a, one of those little pop-up things, amoeba records, and he, he did that. I was invited along to it, it was absolutely stunning. He breaks up in the middle of the song, it just suddenly hits it.

• 1:34:00Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:34:00Speaker 06

  And he does this little vocal trick, because he's starting to, he's starting to lose it. And he does this vocal trick, we go, oh, like a little way to, like a reboot his voice, so he won't break up, it was astonishing.

• 1:34:11Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:34:12Speaker 06

  And there's a clip of it online, but I remember watching it at the time, and you were so moved by it. But it was uncharacteristic for Paul to be that emotional. By the way, do you remember all the shit he was given when he said, when he was asked how he felt about John being so, you know, it's a drag? And he was, oh, how inconsiderate, that's just, you know, you're being door-slept back out, what do you think?

• 1:34:39Bill Maher?

  That's, that's, the world, it's haters. It's like the world's just full of haters, and their job is to, however you handle something, hate it. I always say, it's like relationship breakups. When you break up, however you do it, the other person just wants to hate that. If you're honest, you should have spared my feelings. If you spared my feelings, you should have been honest, because they just wanna hate you. They, and it's okay, we've all been there.

• 1:35:06Speaker 06

  As homo sapiens.

• 1:35:07Bill Maher?

  Like, they just, people just wanna find something to bitch at and hate, and there was no thing he could have said that would have satisfied them, or there weren't. Because when there's no, like, rule to the game.

• 1:35:23Speaker 06

  Why should we have to share his innermost grief to a TV camera crew at that split second, the day after? And there's a, in the movie Daniel, there's a great line where the, the daughter of the Rosenbergs, as depicted, is really very sad, and somebody says, well, why can't you get over it? And the line is, do you ever notice she might just be inconsolable? I thought, what a word, inconsolable.

• 1:35:48Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:35:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think that's probably how Paul felt at that moment, and why.

• 1:35:51Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean, also, he said, it's a drag, it's not like he said, oh, good, you know, he's dead. You know what, I never liked the guy, since we had this argument about who wrote In My Life? I say I did it, and I'm glad he's, that didn't happen. He said it's a drag, which it was.

• 1:36:06Speaker 06

  Which it was, and the thing.

• 1:36:08Bill Maher?

  And continues to be, I mean, I can't believe it's like coming up on fifty years. Fuck are we old? I mean, fifty, nineteen eighty, so it's been forty-six years since John Lennon. That's, I mean, when you think about seventy years, okay, say, the Beatles were certainly right in the middle of being the biggest stars in the world sixty years ago. Let's collect in nineteen sixty-six.

• 1:36:35Bill Maher?

  Well, when I was ten, what would have been a song from nineteen oh-six? No, from eighteen ninety-six, would be sixty years before, when I was listening to the Beatles. That's what kids must think about us talking about a song from nineteen sixty-six. Except for the fact that the Beatles' music definitely endured in the culture, it's in commercials, kids do know it. Whereas I, at eighteen ninety-six, what would be a song I would know from there? Maybe you could, oh, okay, you know, you know, I don't know, Mary, Row Your Boat, some, some, some ancient song,

• 1:37:16Bill Maher?

  and Alexander's Ragtime Band or some shit, but those songs died out. Beatles songs didn't die out, yes, more than when in their heyday, of course, but they didn't die out nearly to the same degree as something from eighteen ninety-six, what did for me.

• 1:37:33Speaker 06

  Right, and you're, you're right, and I think that's partly because, I think it was also, it was like almost a perfect storm of the way media developed, and the transistor radio and everything. That would never happen again today, that what happened with the Beatles on that level could never happen, because it was just a confluence.

• 1:37:51Bill Maher?

  Technology helped them.

• 1:37:52Speaker 06

  The technology and the times, it just happened, it was meant to be, if you believe in that sort of thing. But certainly, no, I don't think that can ever re-break.

• 1:38:01Bill Maher?

  The fact that they were playing stadium concerts through the P A system of the stadium, none of their own equipment, they just came in there and they used the same speaker that the, that the team used.

• 1:38:16Speaker 06

  The hot dog announcement.

• 1:38:17Bill Maher?

  Number seven, batting number seven, Mickey Mantle, number seven. That's the speaker that they were, and playing to, but, you know, nobody was listening.

• 1:38:26Speaker 06

  And they couldn't hear themselves, no wonder they stopped. Now, is the sixtieth anniversary of, the sixtieth anniversary of the Beatles quitting live performance, which was the breakthrough point, Candlestick Park, end of August nine sixty-six, they said that we're done, we're over. And Brian Epstein thought that was the end for them, he didn't understand, but they wanted, they wanted out. It wasn't that they started, oh, it would be better in the studio, they just wanted to stop.

• 1:38:51Bill Maher?

  I don't believe in the universe, although I know it's up there. But if I did, I would say, like, nineteen sixty-six, six-six, I never was a big fan of sixes, you know, the devil thing, I'm sure it's bullshit, I just, so like, that year, mm. And then it was just like, everything conspired against them, like, they just had ugliness all year.

• 1:39:17Speaker 06

  Well, if you wanna make it six-six-six, it's June sixty-six.

• 1:39:21Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:21Speaker 06

  That's when the bigger than, with bigger than Jesus.

• 1:39:25Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:39:26Speaker 06

  Blows up out of, out of.

• 1:39:28Bill Maher?

  That one, plus getting roughed up in.

• 1:39:30Speaker 06

  Vanilla.

• 1:39:31Bill Maher?

  In Asia.

• 1:39:32Speaker 06

  Vanilla.

• 1:39:33Bill Maher?

  Like, the Japanese, they were, you know, I think they, they didn't rough them up, but I think they, they don't like make noise during a concert, you know, it was like shit like that, like, oh, wow.

• 1:39:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was because of in Maldonado, because they, they turned down an invitation.

• 1:39:46Bill Maher?

  That's the Philippines, not Japan.

• 1:39:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, you're right.

• 1:39:48Bill Maher?

  I think Japan, the audience just didn't, like, you know, they were like having the time of their life and going.

• 1:39:55Speaker 06

  It's different audience reactions.

• 1:39:58Bill Maher?

  No, Manila was actually scary because because they seemed to be the the I mean now we would say they were symbolizers symbolizing colonization and colonizers because here are these white guys coming in to the Philippines and insulting the first lady like when they do that to a white first lady, would they do that to the queen? No, but to our queen, they can't be bothered to show up. You know, you know, that was the subtext and, you know, the British certainly earned that they I mean, but the kids today who don't know what colonization is, that's some actual colonization. When you go into a place that's nothing like you, you make it I mean, you know, India is very British colonized.

• 1:40:42Bill Maher?

  Some for the good. I mean, that's the great scene in the Monty Python movie about what did the Romans ever do?

• 1:40:47Speaker 06

  Apart from this, but from that, the wine, whatever, the baby, the alcohol, wine.

• 1:40:53Bill Maher?

  Sanitation.

• 1:40:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, but apart from that, what else have you done?

• 1:40:57Bill Maher?

  Safety, aqueduct, agriculture, what have they ever?

• 1:41:02Speaker 06

  And thank God George Harrison financed that for me. You remember his line when they said, why did you put up five minutes? He said, I wanted to see the film.

• 1:41:08Bill Maher?

  That's that's nothing more baller than that.

• 1:41:11Speaker 06

  They they did have that kind of thing. I I remember with.

• 1:41:17Bill Maher?

  Let's go through his great songs.

• 1:41:19Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:41:20Bill Maher?

  Okay. All Things Must Pass, bunch of great songs on that. Never crazy about the title song, all lugubrious and slow. Some of them were, but the the uptempo ones, the Lord is awaiting on you all and, you know, just wah wah. You know, just really. It's funny, when he when he wanted to rock, it didn't matter if the lyrics matched, like All Those Years Ago, which the tribute song, it's like a very upbeat song about.

• 1:41:49Speaker 06

  It wasn't written as a John tribute. It was a melody he got.

• 1:41:52Bill Maher?

  The lyrics don't match.

• 1:41:53Speaker 06

  That's right. The melody had been written the previous year and he repurposed it. That's what the Beatles are very economical. They repurpose. But the interesting thing is, do you remember the track one of side one of that album?

• 1:42:06Bill Maher?

  What album?

• 1:42:07Speaker 06

  Of the All Things Must Pass because it's very significant.

• 1:42:10Bill Maher?

  What is it?

• 1:42:10Speaker 06

  It's I'd Have You Any Time.

• 1:42:13Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah, the Dylan.

• 1:42:14Speaker 06

  Yes, it's a Dylan Harrison composition.

• 1:42:16Bill Maher?

  Yes, it is.

• 1:42:17Speaker 06

  And you know why it's track one, side one?

• 1:42:19Bill Maher?

  Why?

• 1:42:20Speaker 06

  It's George's fuck you to John and Paul. You don't rate me as a writer, but I'm riding with Bob Dylan.

• 1:42:26Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:42:27Speaker 06

  And that's serious. I know that's that.

• 1:42:29Bill Maher?

  I didn't know that. That's great.

• 1:42:30Speaker 06

  And and and he understandably felt pissed off. He was struggling to get his off. In any other band.

• 1:42:37Bill Maher?

  There's a video very soon after that. It's early seventies and George is at John's house. And they're having they're around the breakfast table and they're like joking and like I am Beatle Ed.

• 1:42:49Speaker 06

  That's because that's when they're doing the Imagine and they're doing.

• 1:42:51Bill Maher?

  Okay, so so obviously, again, these feelings are mixed. There is there is there is hate and there is love and they are living side by side. As they are for many people.

• 1:43:02Speaker 06

  But what they never stopped doing is the little sniping at the Stones. They love that. On the Spartan Pepper calendar, it says Rolling Stones, good guys.

• 1:43:14Bill Maher?

  They're like the Jews, like the Shiites and the Zonies hate each other, but we'll all work together.

• 1:43:18Speaker 06

  And everybody hates the Jews.

• 1:43:19Bill Maher?

  We can get the Jews.

• 1:43:21Speaker 06

  It was back with Tom Lehrer. But no, the Stones, remember that when Andrew Oldham bumps into them on the street, they just John and Paul had just come from a industry awards lunch and Andrew, who had been PR for them six months earlier, has now signed the Stones and he's taken the Beatles and Stones to see each other. And he says, the guys need a single, need a song because at that time they'd put out their first single, The Stones. It was Come On, the Chuck Berry song. It had failed. And at that time, the Beatles had John and Paul had given songs to other artists that had hits. So Andrew said, can you give them a song? Give them a song. And so they go in to meet the Stones and they say, we'll knock up a song for you. They go to the pub. They give them I Wanna Be Your Man.

• 1:44:02Bill Maher?

  I hate that song.

• 1:44:03Speaker 06

  I know, but here's the thing. So today.

• 1:44:05Bill Maher?

  Terrible when they did it, terrible when the Beatles did it. That's on the that's on the worst of the Beatles.

• 1:44:10Speaker 06

  But here's the point. Here's the point. Mick and the Stones are so grateful because a Beatles song was a ticket to a ticket to success. They put it out. What John and Paul omitted to say was, it's one we're giving to Ringo. So so they did it. And that's the little chip on Mick's shoulder that the Stones broke with that.

• 1:44:29Bill Maher?

  Oh, I think it went past that. He does Mick Jagger just pops up a lot in a Beatles biography. You know, like he's at the All You Need Is Love sing along. He's he's just, obviously, it was a small group of just like here in Hollywood now, the A-listers. It wasn't like the Beatles didn't like being Beatles and going out to like the hot club.

• 1:44:56Speaker 06

  They were at clubs all together.

• 1:44:57Bill Maher?

  They took full advantage of that. I to me, the fact that Paul McCartney, the biggest pop star in the world in the mid sixties, was living in a garret in his girlfriend's family house speaks a lot to the man's desire for family. Because he really craved that, I think. And you see that. He could have lived anywhere and he lived in his girlfriend's attic because he kind of lived with the family. He was on the road a lot. So obviously, and I think he was certainly not like a I don't think the relationship was even built around monogamy.

• 1:45:38Bill Maher?

  And probably in in later years, that became an issue because there's at least three songs that seem like they're shots at her. One is maybe Yesterday, I'm Looking Through You. And there's another one that's For No One. There's some bleak romantic songs while at the time he was with Jane Asher.

• 1:46:02Speaker 06

  And Jane was a very fiercely independent, working, professional actress. So there was a little bit of tension, but Paul was going up. She was she was upper middle class. Paul was lower middle class. There was a class thing going on there, but Paul enriched himself. That was why Paul was so upset about all that eulogizing of John as being the only avant-garde one when it was Paul who was living in central London while the others were living in suburbia. And it was Paul who was going and listening to Stockhausen and Paul going to the avant-garde stuff.

• 1:46:33Bill Maher?

  I'm just saying on a family level, I think he wanted, he loved having a family, even if it meant living in the garret. Because coming down to breakfast when they're all there and hearing about what the kids are doing and, you know, the patter familiar is at the head of the table. I think that was all very comforting. And it didn't stop him. From what I've read, I think this is the Barry Miles book, that, you know, he was still living the pop star life. And, you know.

• 1:47:00Speaker 06

  Sure, they went on the road. What Lennon said, it was like Fellini's Satyricon.

• 1:47:04Bill Maher?

  He did.

• 1:47:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, Lennon said on the road of that was like Fellini's Satyricon. They had girls being brought up to the street. That was it.

• 1:47:11Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:47:12Speaker 06

  It was it was very hard to turn them down.

• 1:47:14Bill Maher?

  Of course.

• 1:47:16Speaker 06

  But I'm glad you mentioned the Barry Miles book because when that was an authorized biography, because Barry was a close friend of John and he, Paul especially, and they put together the Indigo Gallery, which is where John and Yoko meet. But when the book comes out, in it's called Many Years From Now, and in it, McCartney reveals that he gave, he was the first person to give a joint to Mick Jagger. Now, when the book was published, when that was announced.

• 1:47:46Bill Maher?

  Dylan gave him the joint. He gave it to Mick Jagger.

• 1:47:49Speaker 06

  But wait, the way it gets better.

• 1:47:52Bill Maher?

  He gave it to Bowie.

• 1:47:54Speaker 06

  The Stones.

• 1:47:54Bill Maher?

  While he was blowing them.

• 1:47:56Speaker 06

  The Stones, The Stones were on tour from Australia, the just before a gig, Mick gets a press release out denying that Paul ever gave something as uncool as Paul McCartney gave him his first joint. He's on the road. It's 50 years earlier. And Mick was so pissed off that he used his press release to deny that he got a joint from.

• 1:48:18Bill Maher?

  Why would that be uncool? I can't think of a cooler thing to happen to me than Paul McCartney giving me my first joint.

• 1:48:23Speaker 06

  Because he was from the north.

• 1:48:24Bill Maher?

  Oh, come on.

• 1:48:26Speaker 06

  There's rivalry, it's just rivalry between those. Listen, when Paul and John did a TV special called The Songs of Lennon and McCartney, where they had a bunch of different artists performing their songs and John and Paul were roped in to be the emcees. And there's some great people there and great musicians and George Martin and Cilla Black and Marianne Faithfull, who's of course Mick Jagger's girlfriend. And right at the beginning, they're they're playing some different audio of different tracks and that written written by John and Paul because by 965, they were being covered by everybody. Ella Fitzgerald, everybody's covering the Beatles.

• 1:49:04Speaker 06

  And they play The Stones, I Wanna Be Your Man. And Paul turns to John and says, I don't remember, did we write that? And John, mindful that Marianne Faithfull said, oh, yeah, we wrote that one. We were about that high. You know, it's just a side gig. And what's the line in And Your Bird Can Sing? Your bird can sing? Tell me your bird can sing and you've got everything. And your bird can sing. Marianne Faithfull, a bird. He's John is having a go at Mick. Oh, tell me that you see those seven wonders and your bird can sing, but you don't get me.

• 1:49:37Bill Maher?

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 1:49:38Speaker 06

  You don't get me because John is pissed that.

• 1:49:42Bill Maher?

  That's so great. I love learning something after all these years that I didn't know. And your bird can sing, right? It's like when you get the crossword puzzle answer. It's like, oh, that's what they were meaning. Oh, I see. And she's a bird, right?

• 1:49:57Speaker 06

  She's a bird.

• 1:50:00Bill Maher?

  Yeah. I mean, the Eagles did it with Steely Dan. They stab them with their steely knives and they just that was a deliberate. You know, when you're on that level, you you both have a rivalry, but only sort of know that there's a very limited number of people who know what you went through, what you're going through. Not that it's worst. We're not we're not Marines here. We're not in war. But we all go through things and it would be nice to know that you can just talk to somebody who you feel like, oh, you kind of must know. It's like doing the acid. You know what it's like to do this job. I mean, I have it with talk show hosts. I just do.

• 1:50:36Speaker 06

  It's it's a small group. It's a very small group.

• 1:50:39Bill Maher?

  I mean, cops, you know, a cop sees another cop at a diner in three in the morning. They don't have to say anything. They both know.

• 1:50:45Speaker 06

  They're in the same.

• 1:50:46Bill Maher?

  How they're feeling and what they go through.

• 1:50:48Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:50:49Bill Maher?

  And, you know, same with the hookers who are in the booth eating.

• 1:50:53Speaker 06

  Retructively.

• 1:50:56Bill Maher?

  Well, cops and hookers are sometimes in the same diner at 3 a.m., sometimes after they had sex with each other.

• 1:51:04Speaker 06

  But when I did the Hard Day's Night DVD, I was interviewing all these people. And I wasn't allowed to interview Paul or George or Ringo, because at that time, Apple had a very strict policy. We don't own the film. We don't deal with anything we don't know. Because the film was made before the Beatles had the power to own it. So I was interviewing everybody else. And I found that some of those people, for them, it was the biggest thing. Hard Day's Night was the biggest thing in their life. Whereas for the Beatles, it was just one, you know, it was a few weeks in a busy year. And one of the guys told me a fascinating thing. I was talking about the scene in the disco, and the Beatles are all dancing in a club. And I said, what was that swinging London thing like? I was too young to be in those.

• 1:51:46Speaker 06

  He said, swinging London was 400 people. That's all it ever was. The Time magazine blew it up into this huge thing. It was just the same 400 people. A few actors, a few musicians, a few artists.

• 1:52:01Bill Maher?

  It's probably always that.

• 1:52:02Speaker 06

  It's all it was. It was just a little clique.

• 1:52:04Bill Maher?

  Always that.

• 1:52:05Speaker 06

  And from the outside, it seemed like this monstrously huge thing. But it was like, you know, that was the inner side of it. It really was.

• 1:52:15Bill Maher?

  Well, is there anything that we should wrap up here that would be like great viral new information? You know, like, I don't know. They've discovered some age-defying medicine, and the Beatles will be reanimated for a concert on... Where were they gonna do Let It Be on a Greek island?

• 1:52:38Speaker 06

  There was, they were talking about an ocean voyage. They were gonna do it on a show, an ocean...

• 1:52:44Bill Maher?

  I love that part in the anthology where George goes, you know, there's something about that period, 68, 69, 70, when they had the boutique, the store, and film ideas, and started the company, Apple, and had all sorts of charlatans and Magic Alex, all that kind of shit. And he said, you know, but at the end of the day, we found out we could only really write songs and sing songs. And, you know, it's okay. Like, that's enough. And sometimes people in show businesses get greedy, I feel. Like, if you do one thing really great... Now, there are actors and people who can sing amazing and, you know, direct. There are hyphens, for sure. But in general, like, yeah. I never understood the film part.

• 1:53:29Bill Maher?

  Like, why they did... They were the first to do what we would call music videos. But they did them like in 1967. The ones I know, we've all seen them. Strawberry Fields, right? I Am the Walrus. These are music videos, exactly as we then saw in 1980 when... Or 82.

• 1:53:48Speaker 06

  82 went out, and the Beatles...

• 1:53:50Bill Maher?

  Okay. So why the 15-year lapse? Why did no one in the 70s pick up on, Beatles make these music videos? Why that whole decade went by without them?

• 1:54:05Speaker 06

  They kept doing performance clips. Nobody understood what the Beatles were doing.

• 1:54:09Bill Maher?

  But they showed them. They made them. They did the exact...

• 1:54:12Speaker 06

  And they did them originally just so they didn't have to go to the trouble of having to go appear on a TV show.

• 1:54:16Bill Maher?

  But it's exactly what then was on in 1982. Quick cutting. You show the band singing the song, sometimes in different setups, where they look different doing it, but they're doing it. They're also doing other things. They're falling down on skis. They're tumbling down a mountain. When they're climbing a tree. You just, things go back. Yeah, it's a music video. And for some reason, they just fucking left it lying on the table for 15 years. I find it baffling.

• 1:54:45Speaker 06

  It is baffling. I, when I interviewed Richard Lester, who did Hard Day's Night in hell, and was very inventive, and had worked also with Beatles elements. And he said MTV had sent him a diploma saying that he was the father of music video. And he said he wrote back to them saying, I demand a paternity test.

• 1:55:03Bill Maher?

  Ah, that's awesome.

• 1:55:06Speaker 06

  He was pissed off. Listen, there were, there's, we've only scratched the surface.

• 1:55:10Bill Maher?

  It's amazing how long you could do this because... But I'm sure that there are like, you know, radio stations that do it every Sunday, aren't there?

• 1:55:19Speaker 06

  Oh, they're not just that. There's on, there are all...

• 1:55:21Bill Maher?

  But they're not as good as this one was.

• 1:55:22Speaker 06

  No, of course not. But they were...

• 1:55:24Bill Maher?

  They're all just poor man's version of this Beatles discussion. We got down to the nitty-gritty about them. And you're right, we have only scratched this.

• 1:55:32Speaker 06

  We have to. Now, for example, of obscure Beatles songs, the Holy Grail, the one that nobody hears. Have you ever heard Colliding Circles?

• 1:55:41Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:55:41Speaker 06

  Pink Limp Bizkit's Paper Shirt?

• 1:55:43Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:55:43Speaker 06

  Left Is Right and Right Is Wrong?

• 1:55:46Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:55:46Speaker 06

  Deckchair?

• 1:55:47Bill Maher?

  No. Who are these? What are these? But, because like, I must say, when they go into the vault, sometimes they still come out with the gold. I love the two songs on the Anthology album that were stuff Yoko had lying around, you know, on the kitchen floor. I love Free as a Bird. I know it wouldn't, it could have been better if John was alive when they made it. They still made a great record. I love that. And I really love...

• 1:56:16Speaker 06

  Real Love.

• 1:56:17Bill Maher?

  Real Love.

• 1:56:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:56:18Bill Maher?

  Is one of their best. I don't know why that didn't...

• 1:56:20Speaker 06

  He still, he still, he still had the muse. He still had the...

• 1:56:23Bill Maher?

  So I don't mind when they, when they do that. But like, these ones, but I've also heard some real shit. And I don't know, these, if, if, what I'm saying is, if we've been digging in this barrel for 50 years, I can't imagine anything down there is like, wouldn't have come up by now. I don't think it's gonna be better than Real Love.

• 1:56:43Speaker 06

  Those four are being the most sought after.

• 1:56:48Bill Maher?

  What are they, Lennon tapes?

• 1:56:50Speaker 06

  No. Sadly, they were song titles that I threw into an article in 1972 when I needed to pad out the article of new Beatles songs. I was...

• 1:57:01Bill Maher?

  You made it up?

• 1:57:02Speaker 06

  I padded an article. I was commissioned to write an article for an English...

• 1:57:06Bill Maher?

  That's not padding. That's, that's making it up.

• 1:57:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, but I was short of titles. I needed to put in unreleased Beatles songs, and there weren't that many. So, because I've got all these...

• 1:57:15Bill Maher?

  Is this a scandal?

• 1:57:17Speaker 06

  Only when I fessed up to it later. I did it in 1972.

• 1:57:21Bill Maher?

  What was your punishment?

• 1:57:23Speaker 06

  George Martin said if he'd had a penny for every time somebody had asked him about these four non-existent songs, he'd have been really wealthy. It was, there was no penalty. It was, it was only a throwaway. I was just, the article, I was short of songs. So I threw in, I knew that Apple routinely denied the existence of songs that we Beatles fans knew existed, like Why's the New Mary Jane? We knew that existed. And I didn't think that Apple would say, none of those songs exist. By the way, these four definitely don't exist. So I got away with it. Just padded the article. It never occurred to me, but 20, 30 years later, Beatles, serious Beatles historians had written, seen that everything else in the article was legit, and just assumed that these were real. So they, they took on a myth.

• 1:58:07Speaker 06

  And everyone was saying, oh, John plays saxophone on this, or George plays maracas. It's just, it was nonsense. It was, it made me understand how mythology is created. And when I fessed up, I did a one-man show, and I made a thing about, you know, these four songs I wrote for the Beatles. And people said, oh, that's nonsense. I like the way you did it, but I've heard those songs. So people were saying that songs that don't exist...

• 1:58:32Bill Maher?

  That's awesome. That's such a, that's such a great story, indicating something timeless and sad about human nature. It's so true. People, there's an old story. I remember John Chancellor told it on The Tonight Show when they were talking about like, an Israeli peace deal in the 70s or something. It wasn't going well. He said, the story is, there's an old man in Damascus, and he's trying to get to sleep in the afternoon. But the kids are in the courtyard, playing and making a lot of noise. So he, I get these kids to shut up. He goes up to the window and he yells out, hey, they're giving away oranges in the marketplace. And the kids run off. Oh, they're giving... Goes back to sleep. Five minutes, then he gets up. He goes, what am I doing, sleeping?

• 1:59:16Bill Maher?

  They're giving away oranges in the marketplace. All right. I gotta go to the bathroom.

• 1:59:22Speaker 06

  Bill, I'm gonna leave you with George's famous exit line.

• 1:59:26Bill Maher?

  What is it?

• 1:59:27Speaker 06

  See you around the clubs.

• 1:59:29Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:30Speaker 06

  That was, that was their sardonic humor. See you around the clubs. That's all he could say to them when he walked out. It was forgiven. But there you go, that line.

• 1:59:38Bill Maher?

  It's a great line.

• 1:59:39Speaker 06

  It is.

• 1:59:40Bill Maher?

  Okay. All right. Well, we'll have to scratch more of the surface.

• 1:59:44Speaker 06

  Anytime.

• 1:59:50Bill Maher?

  I'm anal retentive, so I like how far...

• 1:59:52Speaker 06

  No, no kidding.

• 1:59:59Speaker 05

  Hey, Jay Leno here. And I'm teaming up with Yamava to celebrate their 40th anniversary. On July 24th, we're giving away one of my favorite muscle cars, the 1987 Buick GNX. Club Serrano members will have four ways to qualify. And one lucky winner will not only drive off with this iconic ride, but also get $400,000 in free play. This is your chance to win an American original, only at Yamava. You in? tflyamava.com. Must be 200 under 20. Please gamble responsibly.

• 2:00:29Speaker 05

  Work has never been simple. Not building cities, not landing rockets, not keeping customers happy. Because the work that matters most crosses teams. It picks up context and changes midstream. It gets handed off, handed back, and occasionally buried in a thread called "help." And when your customers are businesses, that complexity gets real, fast. That's the kind of work Front was built for. A support issue needs sales context. A billing question turns into an ops conversation. A shipment update lives in three tools,

• 2:00:56Speaker 00

  two threads, and one person's head. If your CX tools were built for simple tickets, they weren't built for this. Because real customer problems don't fit neatly in a queue. Front brings conversations, context, and coordination into one place so teams can see what happened, who owns it, and what needs to happen next. Because complexity isn't what breaks customer work, legacy ticketing tools do. Front, the only customer operations platform built for B2B complexity. Learn more at complexity欠front.com.

• 2:01:28Speaker 00

  Want to be the one who's always in the know about the game, the scores, the plays? Here's a tip: the Apple Sports app. Just pick your favorite teams and get automatic live updates without even knowing their schedules. And when your team scores, it shows up right on your iPhone lock screen, making it easy to check in anytime. So rule the group chat and download Apple Sports for free on the App Store or find it on your new iPhone.

• 2:01:52Speaker 02

  Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment.

• 2:02:10Speaker 02

  Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch.

• 2:02:14Speaker 03

  Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com.

• 2:02:22Speaker 07

  Para los grandes, para los chicos, para los bajos y los altos, los pacifistas, los valientes, para los optimistas y los pesimistas, los que valoran lo de adentro, para los que están lejos, los que no vende lejos y los que no vende cerca, para los introvertidos y los extrovertidos, para los que piensan y los que hacen, para los que nos mostraron el camino. Coca-Cola, para todos. Compra una Coca-Cola en una tienda cerca de usted.