** LINN - Saturday 22nd November from 12 mid day. PINK FLOYD**

** LINN - Saturday 22nd November from 12 mid day. PINK FLOYD**

My sincere apologies to those whom have set aside their evening to attend the LINN lounge event we had planned for tomorrow evening, Thursday 24th, but the event has been cancelled. 

LINN just informed me that it would be unfair to other retailers whom have bought an Exakt system for P&S then to borrow the Exakt system and to hold an event with it. The system was being sent here primarily for test from a potential customer.

I'm a bit lost for words but have exhausted and am exhausted in my attempts to change this decision.

Again my sincere apologies for any inconvenience. Kind Regards // Martin Peoples

'LINN LOUNGE', our monthly event based on 24 Bit studio master music from LINNrecords.

NEXT LINN LOUNGE (Thursday 24th 6:30pm *cancelled*) - The Beatles

Playback with LINN HiFi new reference system: LINN Klimax DSM - Exakt.

 

The Doors - Thursday 29th August 18:30. Warm welcome!

 

NEXT LINN LOUNGE Thursday 22nd August 18:30. Warm welcome!

Text from Tuesday 27 Nov 2012

George Harrison:

Good evening and welcome to tonight’s first in a series of Linn Lounge Events.

Linn Lounge offers a chance to hear some of a latest studio master recordings played here on a Linn Digital Streaming Music System.

We’ll be talking about the artist’s influences leading them to write the songs on the album as well as of course enjoying the album itself recorded as a glorious studio master.

Following the presentation we’ll be serving more refreshments and offer you the chance to choose some of your own music to play back on the X systems we’ve got set up around the store.

Before we get started, can I just get a show of hands:

Who already owns a streaming music player?

Who owns a Linn system?

Who’s been in to the store before?

So tonight Linn Lounge presents..... George Harrison – Early Takes Volume 1.

MUSIC – Elvis Presley’s, Heartbreak Hotel via Spotify.

(play first 30 secs then turn down to talk over the music)

An epiphany!

George Harrison said that, when he was 12 or 13, he had an "epiphany" – riding a bike around his neighbourhood, he heard Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" playing from a nearby house, from that moment on he was hooked. 

Even though he had done well enough on his entrance exams to get into the city's best high school, from that point on, the former good student lost interest in school.

By 14, Harrison had already met Paul McCartney on the school bus and had bought his first guitar, a Dutch Egmond flat top from a fellow student at the Liverpool Institute. He formed a skiffle group called the Rebels with his brother Peter and a friend.

MUSIC – “Raunchy” by Bill Justis – (spotify)

(begin playing at a low level to talk over it)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0djo1QiXDyY

McCartney told his friend John Lennon about George, who could play this track on his guitar "Raunchy", by Bill Justis.^[22] Harrison became part of The Beatles when they were still a skiffle group called The Quarrymen.

Although Lennon considered him too young to join the band, Harrison hung around and filled in as needed. But, by the time Harrison was 15, Lennon and the others had accepted him as one of the band. 

Harrison’s role within the group was that of the careful musician who checked that the instruments were tuned. 

By 1965 and the Rubber Soul album, Harrison was developing into a musical director as he led the others into folk-rock via his interest in the Byrds and Bob Dylan, and into Indian music with his exploration of the sitar.

Harrison's musical involvement and cohesion with the group reached its peak on Revolver in 1966 with his contribution of three songs and new musical ideas. By 1967, Harrison's interests appeared to be moving outside the Beatles, and his involvement in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band consists mainly of his one song, "Within You Without You", on which no other Beatle plays, and which stands out considerably from the rest of the album.

MUSIC – “Within you without you” – the Beatles (play first minute then turn down to talk over the music) YOUTUBE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljnv3KGtcyI

During the recording of The Beatles in 1968, tensions were present in the band; these surfaced again during the filming of rehearsal sessions at Twickenham Studios for the album Let It Be in early 1969. Frustrated by ongoing slights, the poor working conditions in the cold and sterile film studio, plus Lennon's creative disengagement from the group, Harrison quit the band on 10 January, but quickly returned after negotiations with the other Beatles.

Although strained, relations among The Beatles were more cordial during recordings for the album Abbey Road. The album included "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something", which was later recorded by Frank Sinatra, who considered it "the greatest love song of the past fifty years,".

MUSIC: “Something” – The Beatles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzkhOmKVW08

(play first 40 secs then turn down to talk over the music)

Harrison's increasing productivity, coupled with his difficulties in getting The Beatles to record his music, meant that by the end of the group's career he had amassed a considerable stockpile of unreleased material. His last recording session with The Beatles was on 4 January 1970. Lennon, who had left the group the previous September, did not attend the session.

Harrison's song-writing improved greatly through the years, but his material did not earn respect from his fellow Beatles until near the group's break-up. McCartney told Lennon in 1969: "Until this year, our songs have been better than George's. Now this year his songs are at least as good as ours". 

MUSIC – Wonderwall Music, On the bed – George Harrison

Before The Beatles split up in 1970, Harrison had already recorded and released two solo, mainly instrumental, albums, Wonderwall Music and Electronic Sound. It was only when Harrison was free from The Beatles that he released what is regarded as his first "real" solo album, the commercially successful and critically acclaimed All Things Must Pass.^[94]

In 1970, George moved into a new home in Henley-on-Thames called Friar Park. In this home he installed a state of the art recording studio where he would work on song ideas or invite friends around for a jam.

Early Takes Volume 1 is the first fruits of a series of releases making Harrison’s home recordings from Friar Park available to fans, lovingly curated and tenderly teased into sonic shape by Giles Martin, son of the of the legendary producer George Martin.

Giles Martin tells us.......

“He was a very diligent archivist, he seems to have kept just about everything.

“We went through the stuff marked ‘demos’ first, a lot of different reels, half-inches, quarter-inches, even cassettes, then we made an Excel sheet and wrote down song titles, keys and tempos.

“We’d also add comments about whether the tapes were any good or not. Some of them were just things George had taped off the radio for some reason. Also, you’d occasionally come across, for example, a tape marked ‘Ringo, Klaus, George, Eric’, thinking it would be something great, but it might just be them tuning up and chatting for half an hour!

“It’s a bit like panning for gold. There was the odd day where we waded through boxes for 10 hours and when Olivia, his wife, came in to see what we’d found I had nothing to play her. It’s a funny process, you can spend a lot of time going round in humdrum circles, but then there’d be these huge perks when you found something great.”

One of the biggest surprises for Giles was this first track involving George, Klaus Voorman (on bass) and Ringo Starr, sketching out the an idea for this song, trying to work out the best vibe.

MUSIC – My Sweet Lord – George Harrison

(play full track in studio master)

Harrison began writing "My Sweet Lord" in December 1969, when he, Billy Preston and Eric Clapton were all in Copenhagen. By this point, Harrison had already written the gospel-influenced "Hear Me Lord" and "Gopala Krishna", and the African-American spiritual "Sing One for the Lord",

In this particular version Giles Martin commented,

“What’s cool about this is that it shows the roots of the song, and it’s got a great feel to it, the drums sound great. It was recorded on an eight-track desk, but only using four of the tracks, and it’s a purely live performance. I think it’s a good counter-point to the finished version that everyone knows so well, there’s a noticeably different groove to it.”

By the early months of 1969, George Harrison had begun an "incredible phase of creativity", one that would last throughout the year,  The ill-tempered Get Back sessions in January had inspired two new Harrison songs in "I Me Mine" and "Wah-Wah", both dealing with the fractious situation with the Beatles.

In the midst of this turbulence, fuelled by McCartney's increased bossiness, 

Lennon's abdication from band leadership 

and Harrison's struggle to get respect from his bandmates, the spectre of growing financial problems within their Apple business empire continued to loom. 

This was the context within which "Run of the Mill" was written, the song title being a play on the Northern English phrase "trouble at t'mill".

Harrison described the lyrics as "the first song I ever wrote that looked like a poem on paper",^[31]

MUSIC – Run of the mill – George Harrison

(play full track in studio master)

During the 60’s George developed a strong relationship with Bob Dylan.

In 1968, having spent much of October and November working in Los Angeles, George and Pattie Harrison were invited to spend Thanksgiving with the Dylans.

Despite Dylan’s excitement at their arrival, Harrison found him withdrawn and seemingly lacking in confidence, in stark contrast to the outspoken, enlightened individual he’d made a connection with two or more years before. All that changed on the third day, when the guitars came out and "things loosened up”.

Well known for his unsophisticated musical approach,  particularly in comparison to the Beatle’s broader “harmonic palette”, Dylan was now eager to learn some more-advanced chords − at which point Harrison hit on the opening, G major 7 up to B♭ major 7 chord sequence to “I’d Have You Anytime”.

Keen to break down the barriers that Dylan had imposed during the visit so far, Harrison came up with the song’s opening lines:

Let me in here
I know I’ve been here
Let me into your heart
Let me know you
Let me show you
Let me grown upon you

At the same time, he was pushing Dylan to come up with some words of his own.^[14] Dylan duly supplied a rejoinder, in the form of the song’s bridge-chorus:

All I have is yours
All you see is mine
And I’m glad to hold you in my arms
I’d have you anytime.

MUSIC – I’d have you anytime – George Harrison

As Giles Martin commented on this track,

“This is a track he wrote with Bob Dylan, and we wanted to show the Dylan influence on George’s writing. It’s very organic. With advances in studio techniques there’s always the danger of the artist moving farther away from the listener, but this version really brings the listener closer to George. It’s a very fragile version of the song.”

The next 2 tracks on the early takes album were cover versions of songs that George never released, the first by Dylan and the second by the Everly Brothers.

Giles Martin stated,

“We thought it would be good to follow the Dylan co-write with a cover of a Dylan song. I like the vibe of this. He recorded it at home in Friar Park at some point during the ‘80s, and it originally had programmed drums and loads of keyboards on it, George had overdubbed himself for a three-part vocal harmony.

“I asked Olivia if it would be OK to break it down a bit, I thought it sounded a lot better stripped to its bones. You can still hear a bit of the drum sound in the background, because there was bleed on the tape - probably coming through from George’s headphones.”

The second unreleased track is a cover of the Everly Brothers, Let it be me. The Beatles were always big fans of the Everly Brothers, and it is believed that this version that we’re about to play was recorded at Friar Park immediately following George attending the Everly Brothers Reunion Tour concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1983.

Giles Martin says,

“We first came across him singing this on one of the demo reels, but then we found this multi-track version a bit later. On first listen I thought it might have been George harmonising with Jeff Lynne, I didn’t realise it was two Georges, but Olivia put me straight.

MUSIC – Mama, you’ve been on my mind – George Harrison

MUSIC – Let it be me – George Harrison.

Back in 1969, Harrison was in Gothenburg on the European tour supporting Delaney, Bonnie and Friends and Eric Clapton.

Delaney handed Harrison a bottle-neck slide guitar, which he immediately began to play around with. One of the first results of Harrison's discovery of this instrument was the track "Woman Don't You Cry For Me". Apparently the song almost went on his 1970 landmark triple album All Things Must Pass, but did not actually appear until 1976 and Thirty Three & 1/3.^[1]

For this version that we’re about to play, Giles Martin describes it as

“a great example of rootsy George, and it shows him playing acoustic guitar in way that you don’t normally hear him play.

MUSIC – Woman Don’t you cry for me – George Harrison

Again from that same writing era is the next track, ‘Awaiting on you all’.

Giles Martin tells us....

“In much the same way as we were reluctant to manipulate anything so that it was more in time or in tune, because the point of the record was to keep the personality, to make the listener think they’re sitting with George in Friar Park, we wanted to keep the spoken intro to a track wherever there was one.

“He actually gets the title wrong here, he calls it Awaiting ‘For’ You All. I think this is really cool, it’s got a good basic band groove, I think of it as George breaking down a wall of sound.

MUSIC – Awaiting on you all – George Harrison

The album now brings us back to the story involving Bob Dylan.

Back in 1969, shortly after George spent time with him in upstate New York, Dylan decided to make his comeback following 3 years of virtual seclusion by headlining a music festival at Wootton on the Isle of White on the South Coast of England.

The public's expectations regarding Dylan's return were unrealistically high and his performance on 31 August was roundly viewed as anticlimactic, at best, if not a "Midnight Flop!", according to one British tabloid. Having gifted Dylan his vintage Gibson J-200 acoustic guitar, Harrison was apparently taken aback that his friend had arranged for "Hare Krishna Mantra" to be played over the concert PA minutes before he and The Band went on stage. Harrison then watched Dylan's performance from the VIP enclosure and was later moved to write a song dedicated to him, titled "Behind That Locked Door". As with their 1968 collaboration "I'd Have You Anytime", the lyrics address Dylan's elusive nature, with Harrison echoing the "Let me in here" message of that earlier song.

Giles Martin comments on this recording....

“George is an interesting singer, in that he often doesn’t sound like he’s singing. His pitch is great, the harmony he brought to The Beatles was extraordinary, but there’s a kind of conversational intimacy that he brings to a song. This is a great example of that kind of folk-tinged spoken word quality he had. You or I probably couldn’t get away with it without sounding like William Shatner.”

Let’s now hear this early take of “Behind that locked door.

MUSIC – Behind that locked door – George Harrison

The next track, “all things must pass”, is another example from the joint writing session between Dylan and Harrison at their meeting in up-state New York.

Like a number of Harrison songs ("Here Comes the Sun", "So Sad" and "Blow Away" being others), the lyrical and emotional content of "All Things Must Pass" is based around metaphors involving the weather and the cycle of nature:^[16]

It was originally released by Billy Preston after The Beatles had rejected the song in 1969 for inclusion on what would become their Let It Be album.

Giles Martin comments,

“It’s such a big song on the album of the same name, but this particular version kind of takes you back into the lyrics again.

“George liked to write about things that were happening to him at that moment in time, and this was obviously written while he was going through the ending of The Beatles, so to hear him doing it pretty much on his own transports you to where his head was on the day he laid it down.”

MUSIC – All things must pass, George Harrison

In early August 1972, Harrison tried recording "When Every Song is Sung", a ballad from the All Things Must Pass era, as a single for Cilla Black. Although the project was not completed, he later decided to write a B-side for her, which would become "The Light That Has Lighted the World".  Harrison explained that the lyrics dealt with the "Local boy/girl makes good" phenomenon, where the public initially supports someone who achieves success yet are then disapproving if fame or success changes that person. Both he and Black were from Liverpool and had become famous quickly, after which many people considered their personalities had changed − a common link that Harrison thought of basing the intended B-side around. After he'd come up with the opening two lines, however, the theme soon evolved into something more personal.

At the July 1971 press conference preceding the Charity Bangladesh concerts he organised in Madison Square Garden, Harrison had admitted he was "flattered" and "honoured" to be receiving the same attention and acclaim once reserved for The Beatles.

 A year later, though, his words to "The Light That Has Lighted the World" were a plea for freedom from public scrutiny regarding his Beatles past.

On this particular recording of “The light that has lighted the world”, Giles Martin comments,

“I honestly wasn’t sure about this recording, because it’s a bit rough at the end, but there’s something about it that appeals. It sounds like he’s playing it to just one person late one evening, which is very George, it’s what he would do, Olivia tells me.

"It’s a little bit special; it shows how George could make something simple sound very spiritual, almost dreamy in a way. Even though the sequencing of album tracks in a specific order is becoming more irrelevant in these download days, I think this works beautifully as a closer.”

This brings this Linn Lounge presentation of George Martin Early Takes Volume 1 to an end.

Just as a small notice next month Linn Lounge will be presenting the Rolling Stones here in the store.

Now its your turn to be the DJ. We’ve got X systems set up for you this evening to listen to some of your own music so please fill your glasses grab an iPad and share some great tracks.

….. Data capture ….. Download code with free music for attendees!

Thank you.