Help! Me Understand the References

As I was merrily tripping my way along the information super-highway, I happened to find a very useful and well-hidden web site containing a catalog of "Britishisms!" in the movies Help! and A Hard Day's Night.  

When I was younger than today, I might have seen this site and looked the other way, but as it stands, I'm passing it along to you, my sweet lovers and friends:

A Guide to Britishisms and Cultural Curiosities in "Help!" and "A Hard Day's Night"

Here were a few of my favorites from the movie Help!:

* Ringo says, "I thought she was a sandwich, 'till she went spare on me hand."  The term "spare" is slang for "crazy."

* After being yanked out of bed during a failed attempt to steal his ring, Ringo crawls over to John and accuses him of "messin' about with me in my kip."  A "kip" is a bed.

* When Ringo and John are walking down the street to "post a letter," they are reciting poetry back and forth: "I sat belonely down a tree // humbled fat and small // A little lady sing to me // I couldn't see at all."  The poem is called "I Sat Belonely", and is one of John's poems, found in his book In His Own Write.

* When the recording engineer calls down, "Boys, are you buzzing?", John quips back, "No thanks, I brought the car."  It's a buzzing/bussing pun; "bussing" meant taking the bus.

* Foot (Victor Spinetti's mad scientist character) complains at one point, "It's the brain drain ... his brain's draining."  Apparently the "Brain Drain" was a problem in Britain at the time; British scientists were migrating to other countries in order to find better opportunities, so the best "brains" in Britain were "draining" off.

Don't Pass this By!

For all the Lennon-Lovers out there, I recently discovered a fab-tastic web site resource containing some amazing articles about John (and the other Beatles as well).  The site is called Absolute Elsewhere, and this is a quick sample of the sort of thing to be found in the "Articles" section of the site:

* A BEATLE'S BOYHOOD - By Hunter Davies (yes, that Hunter Davies, who wrote the authorized Beatles biography in the late 60s)

* THE CHEMISTRY OF LENNON AND McCARTNEY: AN ESSAY - By Ruth McCartney (yes, that Ruth McCartney, Paul's step-sister)

* PETE BEST TALKS - an interview

* VICTOR SPINETTI: AMONG THE BEATLES - another great interview, probably my favorite piece of them all, containing an endearing little story about how each of The Beatles came to visit "Old Vic" when he was sick.  It really highlights each of their individual personalities, and it's a hilarious story!

So go check it out.  It will give you something to read after you've crawled off to sleep in the bath.

Phil & Don

I am currently reading through Philip Norman's biography of John Lennon (which is approximately seven zillion pages long), John Lennon: The Life. This will be my second read-through (I first read it in mid-2008), but I am enjoying it no less than I did the first time around. The below paragraph talks about when John first began to look for a partner, someone with whom he could sing duets in the style of the Everly Brothers. I got goosebumps when I read this; I hope you do too.

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Early June brought the first chart appearance of the Everly Brothers, Don and Phil, two former child country stars whose almost feminine close harmony created some initial confusion with Britain's own Beverley Sisters. The Everlys' number-six hit, "Bye Bye Love," so appealed to John's softer, melodic side - never mind the notion of having someone so close as a brother to sing with - that he began looking around for a partner to form an Everly-style duet. Since his usual blood brother, Pete Shotton, couldn't sing a note, he had a few tentative vocalizing sessions with Len Garry. But the closer-than-Everly brotherhood he was destined to form only a few weeks from now would not be called Lennon and Garry. (Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life, p. 99)