Exemplary taste
Charles Spencer
I've been writing this column for twoand-a-half years now, and am uneasily aware that I have only ever mentioned the Beatles, the greatest of all pop groups, en passant. The reason isn't hard to find. Though I have almost all their albums on CD, plus the essential red and blue greatest hits packages, I hardly ever listen to them, I think I might have played Rubber Soul a year or two ago, and, when it was released in 2000, I tried to turn my son on to their work with the I album, which packed 27 of their number ones on to a single CD. He was seven at the time and blithely dismissed the music as 'childish'. I need hardly add that he was lucky to live.
My problem with the Beatles — and I think it must afflict others of similar age (49, since you ask) — is that I discovered pop through the Beatles when I first heard 'From Me To You' in 1963, aged eight. After that I religiously bought every single as it came out, and, if the pocket money ran to it, every album. And I played them and played them and played them.
Unlike any other act, I suspect I know every lyric to every Beatles song, every middle eight, every vocal harmony, every guitar lick. The result is that when I play the records it seems pointless. I've worn them out. There's no mystery left to uncover. I still love them but I don't need them, I've played them to death.
Or so I thought. The Sunday before last there was a piece in the Observer which revealed that John Lennon's portable jukebox had been discovered, listing, in his own spidery handwriting, the 40 singles it contained. What's more, its contents were being made available on a double CD. I knew I had to have it, and was in the shop first thing on Monday morning. Then, last Sunday, The South Bank Show devoted itself to the jukebox and I found myself watching Melvyn for the first time in yonks. My word, his barnet really is a wonder to behold, more lustrous, prolific, beautifully styled and gleamingly chestnut brown than seems decent on a man of 64. You would need a heart of stone not to laugh at such vanity, and I duly had a very good chuckle indeed, though I couldn't help noticing that Mrs Spencer was regarding my own thinning, unkempt thatch with a peculiar expression redolent of both regret and contempt.
Anyway, Bragg didn't detain us long. We were soon off to meet the aging R&B and rock'n'roll stars whose music had been a formative influence on Lennon's. What an appealing bunch they were too, many of them with hairstyles that matched my Lord Bragg of Wigton's in sheer unfeasibility. What was touching was how pleased they all were to be on the jukebox, even if Lennon had ripped off their licks.
Also crystal-clear was Lennon's exemplary taste. He was as deeply enamoured of soul as of rock and roll, and as Sting, wheeled on to comment on the collection in the regrettable absence of the surviving Beatles, observed: 'It was the Beatles who really awoke us all to black music in the I960s.' Certainly, it was the superb cover of the Miracles' You Really Got A Hold On Me' on the Beatles' second album that first alerted me to the glory of soul music. And the choice of records on the jukebox by the likes of Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Fontanella Bass, the Miracles and the Isley Brothers is immaculate.
There are white artists, too, most notably Gene Vincent, Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan, the Lovin' Spoonful and Donovan, and the CD is a constant delight in its juxtaposition of familiar and unfamiliar songs. The mood is mostly up-tempo, but there are hints of Lennon's darker side too. most notably in the choice of Bob Dylan's marvellously bitter song to Joan Baez, 'Positively Fourth Street', and the heartlessly misogynistic 'First I Look At The Purse' by the Contours.
To my surprise, I suddenly found I was watching The South Bank Show with tears running down my cheeks. It was the grainy black-and-white footage of the Beatles playing I Feel Fine' that plunged me straight back to my childhood, watching Thank Your Lucky Stars on my grandparents' telly after The Sooty and Sweep Show. The Beatles seemed so impossibly young and innocent, so brimful of hope and talent, and a song that had never been one of my favourites suddenly seemed miraculous.
So I owe Melvyn a debt of gratitude. John Lennon's Jukebox is the most enjoyable and genuinely revelatory album I've heard in ages, and the best thing about both CD and TV show is that they have allowed me to listen to the Beatles again with fresh ears.
Charles Spencer is theatre critic of the Daily Telegraph.
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