George Harrison: Behind The Locked Door by Graeme Thomson

George Harrison: Behind the Locked Door, by Graeme Thomson; Omnibus Press

It is said that meeting your heroes is always a mistake, because they never quite measure up to your expectations. I am glad, after reading this book, that I did not meet George Harrison. He comes across as a much more prickly character than I had previously thought.

This biography suffers from appearing about the same time as Mark Lewisohn’s superb masterwork on all four of The Beatles, All These Years: Tune In. Although only one volume of a proposed three has appeared, Graeme Thomson’s book is thin by comparison. It also does not manage to do what Lewisohn has done in walking the fine line between exhaustive biography and hagiography. Whilst Lewisohn has pulled off the trick admirably, I was left with the impression that Thomson has come down a little too far on the negative side. It is a shame, because in digging deeply into some of the less glamorous and attractive parts of the life of George Harrison, he has done much to tarnish him.

George Harrison was a deeply complicated human being. He spent most of his adult life trying to distance himself from being a Beatle. In doing so, he cut a lot of people out of his life. In this biography, Graeme Thomson repeats this conclusion in every possible way. In doing so, he has also painted a picture of Harrison that is rather skewed. Certainly, he was a private man who guarded his privacy fiercely. But he was also a wonderful friend to many people in all walks of life. A little more reflection on this fact would have created a much more balanced picture of George.

I am suspicious of a biography that has many of the major characters missing. It is apparent from the credits and thanks at the end of the book that neither McCartney, Starr nor Yoko Ono consented to be interviewed. All their quotes are therefore second-hand and subject to editing and interpretation. It also seems that Patti Boyd did not speak to the author. It speaks of a writer having lots of doors closed to him.

There are interesting biographical details that are uncovered – the fact, for example, that the Beatle who comes out of this telling with the most credit is Ringo Starr. That when George Harrison’s time was coming to an end, he was given shelter in a private house in Los Angeles owned by McCartney, to avoid the prying eyes of the world. And the fact that it seems there is good evidence to suggest that George was unfaithful to both of his doting wives. This last piece of information reveals as much about Graeme Thomson’s agenda as about the life of Harrison himself.

There is some warmth. The contented Harrison, writing songs for fun at his Gothic Manor Friar Park. The loving father, who involved his son fully in his music-making. And the fabulous generosity of the man who funded many projects without any desire for recognition.

Largely, though, this is a negative book about a man who gave so much in his fifty-eight years. It dwells too much on the paradoxes in Harrison’s life when there was a great opportunity to dig much more deeply into the spiritual side of his existence. After his death, when his friends met to celebrate his life, they all assumed that they were his best friend. This says far more about him than Graeme Thomson managed. He forgot to mention it.

Distant Neighbors - Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry

Distant Neighbors: The Letters of Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry

Edited by Chad Wriglesworth, Counterpoint Press

This is a book for serious students of mid-century American writing. It is a collection of letters between the two men from the mid 1970s until the Twenty-First Century. It is a dry and rather academic document, but one full of insight.

Gary Snyder began life as a backwoodsman and logger, and is now a Man of Letters. His impressive gifts have taken him from the stump-farm on which he was raised, first to University, then to an association with the Beat Movement, to Japan, and latterly to a homestead on the San Juan Ridge in the Yuba watershed in California. He is a godfather of the American environmental movement and a considerable figure in anthropological circles. His is an impressive CV which is fleshed out considerably through the letters he has written and received from Berry.

Wendell Berry is a Kentucky tobacco farmer who studied in New York City, and returned to the farm that had been the home of his family for four generations. As much as Snyder he firmly believes in the importance of being rooted in place. It is only if we know, love and respect our environment that we can begin to take responsibility for it is his claim. There is no responsibility from people only passing through. Berry, like Snyder, has received the Pulitzer prize for literature.

The letters are a strange mix of the academic and fraternal. The editor has chosen a broad range of letters from each man (slightly more were written by Berry) that illustrate their literary aspirations and pursuits, their concern about farming and logging, and their growing friendship.

The letters at the beginning of the book are the most charming. As a friendship begins there are many small politenesses that are evident. As familiarity builds you can sense the warmth between the two men and their families. Both maintain a cordial air, especially when signing off.

The research is thorough, and there are copious footnotes to accompany the text. What is lacking perhaps is some biographical detail. It is almost as if the editor did not wish to enter the more private areas of the lives of the two men. An example of this is when Snyder’s beloved wife Carole passed away early in the new century. When Wendell Berry makes a passing comment to Snyder’s loss, there is a simple footnote and no more. At that point a biography of Carole would have been fitting. The same is true when Snyder lost his sister.

It is perhaps partly due to the fact that both are private men. Snyder knew celebrity in the 1950s in California and his 1972 Pulitzer Prize for ‘Turtle Island’ thrust him back into the spotlight. In the intervening years he has retreated somewhat and spoken through his writing.

Knowledge of the writing of the two men is necessary to add meaning to much of the book. The Gary Snyder Reader is a good companion to have, and many of the letters caused me to look again at his writing. I know Berry’s work less, and it has prompted me to look deeper, especially into his fiction.

Much of the detail that can be gleaned from the letters relates to the number of appearances the two men have made over the decades; speaking to land institutes, academic audiences and literary enthusiasts. It reveals that a career writing is not easy, and involves many airports and departure lounges, even for those most grounded in the soil. It is a particular paradox to think of Gary Snyder boarding a business flight to New York, or answering an e-mail. The latter is something that Wendell Berry has refused to do: he still writes long-hand, true to his piece in the 1980s about his reluctance to buy a personal computer.

There is a long exchange of letters about belief. Berry is of a Southern Christian upbringing, and Snyder is a Buddhist. The interest lies in the way that the two bounce ideas off each other and the mutual respect that they show. There are few other places in his writing where Snyder comments so sensitively – and expertly – about Christianity.

A lifetime of letters (the first are from a time when both men had turned forty) reveal how lives change as people age. The first letters are full of action and the later ones predictably begin to contain medical reports. More delightfully, the later letters also contain details of expanding families, grandchildren, and the love that both men feel for their families.

This book is a tribute to a great friendship that has blossomed over forty years. It is apparent that both men owe a debt of friendship, too, to Jack Shoemaker, who has been a great champion of the writing of Snyder in particular. If it is an insight into Snyder as a man that you are looking for, his letters to Allen Ginsberg is a better choice. However, this book is full of detail about Snyder and Berry and what great servants of the Earth they have been. Now both in their eighties, it is a great tribute to two men who have done so much to open our eyes to the realities of our planet.

A truly 'world' cup

A truly ‘World’ Cup

In a few weeks the FIFA World Cup will take place in Brazil, and the eyes of the world will turn to South America to follow the fortunes of thirty-two qualifiers. It is the twentieth time that teams have officially gathered for a World Championship, and there will be a huge global television audience, boosted by internet access and media saturation. It is big, big business. An indication of how big is that last time FIFA, the world governing body, produced a seventy-three page document called ‘Television Audience Report’ to analyse in minute detail just how many people watched the finals in South Africa. The main concern of the report is how many people are ‘reached’ by coverage, and consequently how much influence the games have had in furthering the fortunes of the senior partners of FIFA; which include Adidas, Coca-Cola, Sony and Visa.

FIFA find it difficult, and financially compromising, when things do not go to plan. They are still baffled as to how the Beautiful Game has failed to make in-roads into India, and has only had limited success in the USA. There is uncomfortable shuffling of paper when politically sensitive issues rear up, such as their refusal to sanction any of their member nations playing against Tibet. Things that do not fit into the big money-making plan are gently and subtly manipulated so that, in time, the problem goes away.

A problem for FIFA is that professional sport is still unpredictable and no matter how careful the organisers try to be to keep everyone happy, mistakes happen. I use the term ‘mistake’ here in the FIFA sense of an event that does not maximise revenue for everyone at the top table. A clear example this time was the European qualification of teams. In the play-off to decide the remaining finalists after the group winners had been decided, Sweden were drawn to play Portugal. It might not seem like an important mistake until you look down the team-sheets of the two countries. Cristiano Ronaldo is Portuguese. Zlatan Ibrahimovic is Swedish. Over two games, the World Cup was bound to lose one of its star players, eliminated before even a ball has been kicked in the final stages. Both players are world stars, and both earn millions through lucrative sponsorship deals. Both raise the status of their national teams and both would grace the finals in Brazil.

Thankfully for everyone concerned, the bigger world star prevailed and the immaculate pectorals of Cristiano Ronaldo will grace the final stages, while poor Zlatan lies on a different beach somewhere, thinking about his next sponsorship deal.

It is not the first time, though, that things did not go quite according to plan. In 1974, when there were only sixteen teams taking part; England, France, Spain, Hungary, Mexico and the USSR did not qualify for the finals in West Germany. England, Spain and France all had large television audiences to satisfy. Mexico were the previous hosts. Hungary were a fading former football powerhouse. The USSR were disqualified after a shameful play-off against Chile. They failed to turn up in Santiago after a coup d’état.

Although the 1974 World Cup was meticulously organised by West Germany, and won by the home team, it must have seemed rather flat, especially for PaniniStickers. They had produced a glossy sticker album for the children of Europe, and had to shoe-horn in a special section at the back featuring four stickers from each of the ‘big’ countries who had not qualified.

In subsequent series, FIFA have gradually manipulated the qualification procedures in line with their ‘vision’ for the spread of football across the world. It is unlikely that a major European team will have problems qualifying in future, as thirteen of the thirty-two places on offer go to Europeans. Africa, so often viewed by FIFA as an important market-place, received the finals tournament in 2010 and have five guaranteed qualifiers in 2014. Asia have four or five places; but Oceania with limited population, televisual punch or corporate value to big sponsors, have ‘half’ a place for each World Cup. What that means is that the single qualifier still has to beat an Asian team in an eliminator.

So, in terms of making sure that the best players in the world are seen every four years, FIFA have it about right. It is controlled, and as much as possible predictable. Footballing backwaters are ignored.

The Australian FA became so disillusioned with the system that it withdrew from Oceania qualification and ‘joined’ Asia, to give themselves a better shot at qualification.

The FIFA website makes promising pronouncements about the prospects of teams in the bottom half of its rankings. There are 209 FIFA member associations. Realistically, any from the bottom one hundred could play on forever and never make it to the finals. We will never see San Marino (208^th) against the Turks and Caicos Islands (209^th) in any World Cup.

I think that is a shame.

It is at this point, every four years, that I dust off my plan for a truly ‘world’ cup. It is so different to the current system that I can guarantee that if any FIFA official ever read it, he (for it is always a man) would wince, and have to lie down in a dark room.

My idea, quite simply, is to play the qualification like the FA Cup. You put all the names into a hat, and draw all the teams against each other, irrespective of global status, FIFA Ranking or geographical location.

It would work like this: in the first round, 162 teams are drawn against each other. 81 would be knocked out, leaving another 81 to advance in the competition and meet the other 47 who had been lucky enough to be given a ‘bye’ in the first round. You then have 128 teams, who are drawn again, just like in the FA Cup. You continue until you have whittled it down to 32 or 16 teams, or however many you want to take part in a ‘finals’ tournament in whichever country has bribed FIFA the most heavily to stage it.

The possibility for upset is vast. Brazil and Argentina might be paired against each other in the first round, as might England and Scotland.

Equally, the possibility for excitement is unconfined. Imagine what might happen if Brazil, for example, had to play a one-game eliminator in North Korea. Or if Spain were drawn against Andorra. In a twelve-game group style qualification, as happens now, the wise money would be on Brazil and Spain. But how about in a single game?

There are many very sensible objections to such an unpredictable World Cup. The main problem is travel. How would the stars of Italy find the time to travel to Indonesia? Could it be afforded? To this objection I would simply state that FIFA, in their wisdom, have decided that Qatar will host the 2022 World Cup in desert conditions. Suddenly my idea does not seem quite as silly. Countries from all over the world will be flown into the desert state, which at ridiculous cost will have to build indoor stadia from scratch. Money talks.

The other main objection is one of spectacle. If the major footballing nations were eliminated in football backwaters, would the finals be worth watching? To this I counter that to truly be world champions, a country needs to be able to confidently approach any opposition and prevail. If Spain, the current World Champions, cannot beat Tonga or Andorra or Sierra Leone, can they truly claim to be the best team in the world?

Lots of questions about non-conformists

“Following a riot in the city in 1274, Norwich has the distinction of being the only English city to be excommunicated by the Pope.”

This quote is lifted directly from Wikipedia about the history of Norwich, the fine old city that was once the second city in England behind London. My wife’s family have roots in Norwich and Norfolk and are rightly proud of coming from the city. As you enter the city there are signs that say ‘Welcome to Norwich – A Fine City’, and I believe them. It’s not a bad piece of PR from some councillor with an over-inflated sense of his (or her) own importance.

I had the good fortune to be educated (in every sense) in Norwich in the early 1990s and even though I did not take all of the opportunities that were offered to me in that time, I still look back with great fondness on my time there. Part of that might be to do with my years coinciding with the greatest in thehistory of Norwich City FC, but there are many other reasons.

One of the main things that is special about the city is that it has been a centre for non-conformism for more than five hundred years. It has been populated by people who think and believe in different things.

The original meaning of non-conformist in England was a person who refused to follow the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. In 1662 the Act ofUniformity ejected about two thousand preachers who refused to conform to the provisions of the Act. Long before the Act, and after it, Norwich was home to men like Robert Browne and William Bridge, who in their own ways demonstrated their wish to behave, worship and live according to their own rules.

By the time I lived in Norwich in the 1990s many of the non-conformist chapels were little used, and the choice of living differently was most visibly expressed by men with dogs on ropes drinking White Lightning outside the Tesco on the market square.

Throughout my adult life I have had an interest in the alternative thinkers, who are often also the ones on the edge of society.

I went from Jack Kerouac to Allen Ginsberg to Gary Snyder to Wendell Berry. I realised quickly that none of them came from around here. Why not?

What makes them different? How much tolerance should there be in any city for those who want to behave in a way that sits uncomfortably outside the accepted rules? What value do such people have, and what happens when their ideas seep into the mainstream of our thinking and behaviour? Why do some areas of public life, such as art, sculpture and music, attract the unorthodox; whilst others such remain steadfastly cautious?

As I age and find myself sounding increasingly like my father, what place does ageing have on my views?

And most importantly, is society now being shaped in such a way that dissenting voices are snuffed out much sooner than in the past? Do we now live in a time when the real non-conformists and dissenters have no voice at all? And what implications does this have for the future of ideas? Where are the supposedly controversial ideas going to come from in the Twenty-First Century?

Everyone lies on a scale between active non-conformist and Martin from ‘Ever Decreasing Circles’. I think how non-conformist a person is in adulthood depends on a number of factors from childhood to first employment. Some of us are told not be quite so silly by our parents and from then on tread a path in their footsteps. Some arrive in Secondary School and have the stuffing knocked out of us by a particularly brutal regime. Some have a period of enlightenment from sixteen to twenty-one, whether away from home at a college or in first employment; and it fizzles out when we leave home, squashed by the commitment of a first home.

For most, it is a financial pressure that makes us conform. You need the job, so you cut your hair and put on a shirt and tie or a sensible skirt. Or both, if you are Eddie Izzard.

What I have found worrying in the last ten years or so is that I still look for the non-conformists all the time, and I see them snuffed out not by a particularly nasty school teacher or a mortgage, but just drowned under a flood of banality that is offered us by large companies from London, Paris, New York and Beijing. We cannot escape the ‘words from the sponsor’.

I go to work, I pay my taxes, I go to Church on a Sunday (itself quite a non-conformist act in 2014) and I am overwhelmed by the beige nature of what the major companies like us to believe is ‘culture’.

I am surprised how all-pervading the soma of modern life is. We are becoming defined by the products that we buy instead of the books that we read. We are placed into target categories by political scientists so that our votes can be better harvested according to the television stations we watch.

I can already hear the voices of several close friends who will be telling me to pull myself together, and that I still have choices, and that I don’t have to end my days watching re-runs of ‘Friends’ and eating crisps. My point really is how much choice do I really have?

So I have devised some simple questions to make an attempt to classify or clarify the choices that I have, and see how easily I could choose an intelligent alternative.

If it isn’t on the internet, how easy is it now to find the information?

If I want to buy food grown near where I live, how easy is it to buy in Sainsbury’s or Tesco?

If I feel strongly about something going on in my town, how easy is it to have my voice heard by someone in power?

If I want to hear music that is not endorsed and massaged by a multinational corporation, which radio stations offer it?

I am proud that I am from the same country as Thomas Becket, William Shakespeare, Oliver Cromwell, Mary Shelley, David Attenborough, Elizabeth Fry, Florence Nightingale, John Peel, Tony Benn and Joe Strummer. I may not agree with everything that these people did or said, but my pride comes from the fact that they were allowed to say it.

I am not proud that I live in a country in which popular protest at dysfunctional government is viewed in the same light as football hooliganism. And in which people pay money to watch John Terry play football.

Somewhere in the middle ground lies a place in which the odd-balls, freaks and eccentrics in our society are tolerated. As the Stranglers said, ‘Whatever happened to the heroes?’ I think they are still there but because Ant and Dec are presenting another Jungle Challenge we may not get the chance to hear from them. We are poorer for it.

10 rules for 10 year olds

10 rules for 10 year olds

1        The screen you love looking at is just a screen. The real world is out there, go and have a look.

2        Collect something that you can’t buy in shops.

3        Read, read, read.

4        There is a difference between heroes and superheroes. You may have a hero who makes a mistake. It is because he or she is a human being.

5        The old people that you see all around you were all ten years old, once. So they know what it is like being you. Listen to what they have to say.

6        As far as we know, time travel is impossible, so make the most of today.

7        Now is the time to learn to play Chess. It’s a skill you will not regret for the rest of your life, and is really good for your brain.

8        Ask your teachers a question every day that is not to do with the curriculum that you are studying.

9        Play a sport that carries on when it starts to rain.

10      Listen to your mother. This is the most important of the ten rules.

The Beatles - Tune In

The Beatles – All These Years

Volume 1: Tune In

by Mark Lewisohn

When I heard that Mark Lewisohn was writing a book about The Beatles, I was immediately keen to know the details. Since the band split there have been dozens of attempts to describe just what happened between 1962 and 1970, and all have been disappointing. Different authors, journalists and historians have encountered unwillingness on the part of the participants, lack of access to information, or have just been sloppy with the facts. There is a whole industry in Beatles Myths that people are happy to recycle, few of which are based in fact.

What Lewisohn has done is to return to as many original documents and eyewitnesses as possible, and he has not been scared to be as comprehensive as he can be. The resulting book is volume one of a proposed three-volume opus, and tells the story only as far as 31^st December 1962. It is eight hundred and forty pages long, not including footnotes and references.

It is a startling work of scholarship.

It is also timely, as fifty years and more have now passed since the events he is describing. For all of my childhood I thought of The Beatles as a band that had only recently split, and it is quite a shock to actually do the mental arithmetic and to realise that it is now a long time ago. Part of this deception is reinforced by the Just For Men still used by some ex-Beatles. The surviving Beatles and the widows of the others are now old people, and their story needs to be told. It seems unlikely that McCartney or Starr will now spend the time doing it themselves. McCartney, I think, is happy to have some episodes of his long career remain ambiguous. Ringo probably isn’t bothered. The time is right for Mark Lewisohn to step up and fill in the gaps. If he lives long enough to complete his magnum opus, I think that in future years it will become known as definitive.

The story of The Beatles does not begin in 1962 when Ringo joined the band. It does not even begin with the meeting of John and Paul at Woolton Village Fair, or the birth of the oldest Beatle (Ringo) on 7^th July 1940. Lewisohn begins his framing of the events in 1829, with the birth of James Lennon somewhere in Ireland, probably in County Down.

There is a whole chapter of careful explanation as to how the families of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Starr and Best arrived in Liverpool.

This may seem like overkill, but there is a reason for taking the long view. It emerges that three of The Beatles (Ringo being the exception) have deep roots in Ireland, and proposes that their links to the spirit of their home city run very deeply indeed. As a port it is a well-spun theory that much of the wit and wisdom of Liverpool is the result of the great mix of immigrants, especially from Scotland and Ireland, and this is thoroughly un-picked by Lewisohn. He considers the old theories and searches for evidence to support them. He even makes reference to the cultural heritage of all the early Beatles, and assesses if common history had a role to play in uniting them (and excluding Pete Best) so conclusively. Where he finds no evidence to support the old ideas, he is not scared to say so.

The emergence of The Beatles as a world-changing cultural phenomenon is linked to two cities. Lewisohn is precise and careful in his description of the events of the five tours of duty to Hamburg. He has done his research well and understands what a place Hamburg must have been in 1961. He does not shrink from the seedier aspects of the time that the young men spent there. A theory central to the Hamburg story is that the massive amount of stage time accumulated was a major part in the subsequent success. Lewisohn is mathematical in his approach and the number-crunching seems to bear out his ideas.

As well as volume one being the story of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison; there is great emphasis on Pete Best, Stuart Sutcliffe and Brian Epstein. If there is a criticism of Lewisohn’s writing it is that the tragedy of Sutcliffe’s life is explored in a scientific way. There is space and a need to consider in more depth the emotional fall-out that his passing caused among his young friends. For the most part he tells the story of these three men with care and attention to all sides. By presenting all the facts, if somewhat dispassionately, he gives the reader the opportunity to decide who was really to blame in the turbulence from which John, Paul George and Ringo neatly emerged.

So volume one is all about back-story, and it is quite a story. It may be too long for most readers – even some ardent fans of The Boys may wilt under the sheer size of this work – but it is necessary, fascinating and vital. John invited Paul, who invited George, who after a long time then invited Ringo. The eight hundred and forty pages that describe these simple links in a chain are quite an event in music and biography.

My mouth is watering for volume two. Lewisohn proposes that it will include the years 1963 until 1966 or 67. I cannot wait.

Silence and stillness

I work in education. Over the last fifteen years I have had the good fortune to work with some very interesting colleagues. I have also taught a lot of amazing children.
A dominating idea in education in the UK is that if there is a classroom full of children and if there is silence, then it follows that the behaviour must be good. Good children are quiet children. I have lost count of the number of times I have noticed a colleague pleading with a group of children to be quiet, and wondered why he or she was asking. Do we need silence in a corridor, or is it just an assumption that the rule must be upheld because our Victorian predecessors insisted on it?
I have been thinking about the lives of some of the children from the school in which I work. Some are ignored or shouted at in the family home, and coming to school is a welcome relief. When they do arrive, they spend a whole day being shouted at to make them silent. Is it any wonder they find the experience of school gruelling?
There is a time for silence in a school. In a religious setting it is important in order to show reverence. In an examination setting it is important so that communication between candidates is prevented. And how those in power love to examine our children. However, I see very little benefit to children in insisting on silence for vast chunks of their school days in every other situation.
The thing that I think many people with whom I work have missed is that stillness is more important than silence. Children live hyper-charged lives and are bombarded with stimulation from a bewildering range of sources. The stimulation usually takes the form of information in one form or another. They are also stimulated by ever-more refined foods that are doing amazing things to their young brains.
I think stillness is important because for some children moments of stillness in school may be their only experience of it. I fear for over-loaded brains, and think providing an opportunity for resting those brains is overlooked.
Our Secretary of State for Education, Mr Gove, is driving rapid change and doing a fabulous job in dragging British Schools into the Nineteenth Century. Such a revolutionary idea as allowing children to rest and have some stillness is absolutely against what he stands for, as it does not help in the process of producing good, compliant little robots to feed into the government's industrial machine.
Stillness in schools allows children to piece together and make sense of various madnesses to which they are exposed.
It also works for adults.
My resolution for the New Year is going to say 'Be quiet' less, and 'Be still' more.