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these too were all final songs of sorts another contender is the long and winding road most would agree this sounds exactly what a beatles final song should be a rueful elegiac look back at their shared history it finally got its chance to be the final song as the final track on the beatles blue compilation album also issued in 1973 then for a few years things went quiet then got incredibly loud live at hollywood bowl recorded in 1964 5 but not released until 1977 is essentially an album s worth of screaming with some songs indistinctly heard in the background the unresolved seventh chord and paul s last shriek on long tall sally then was the final curtain it was how they d often finish their live sets and so again with nothing more to give it was a suitably exuberant and fitting way to bow out you can see them now taking their polite bow while the fans tore the seats from beneath themselves cut to eric clapton s garden on may 19 th 1979 celebrating the guitarist s marriage to pattie boyd yes george s ex wife and the same muse who inspired both something and layla george paul and ringo found themselves part of an impromptu allegedly drunken beatles reunion missing only john they stumbled through get back and sergeant pepper s lonely heart s club band before finishing with a pub band bash at lawdy miss crawdy it was an ignominious note and poor final song to end things on the 1980s the senselessness of john s murder in december 1980 prompted the unthinkable all three remaining beatles finally reunited and sober on record for george s tribute to john all those years ago it was pleasant enough but perhaps not the final word people were looking for for this reason perhaps that s why george recorded the superior when we was fab with ringo on drums for his masterful 1987 cloud 9 album but with john gone so too went the prospect of a genuine reunion and new songs paul had already been admonished by john for turning up unannounced at his new york apartment with a guitar perhaps hoping to rekindle the magic so long then beatles except there were still more final songs to come lots more the 1990s the 90s ushered in the anthology series three double albums worth of giggly outtakes of classic songs alongside some genuine gold like mccartney s demo of come and get it as well as take it or leave it numbers like the lacklustre if you ve got troubles or the dipsy what s the new mary jane more last beatles songs sensing the need to step in and stop this final song madness re enter george martin their peerless original producer he declared once and for all that there was nothing left in the barrel to scrape but hold on alongside this alternative history of the beatles we were treated to some sparkly new recordings free as a bird and real love lovingly rebuilt around some wobbly song writing demo tapes john recorded in the 1970s gifted by yoko to mccartney these were transmogrified into bright tuneful records with cavernous drums sunshine harmonies and searing slide guitars from george they didn t sound like the records the beatles made in the 60s for one thing george didn t really play slide guitar in the 60s the lovely hawaiian flavoured slide on for you blue was played by john instead they sounded like records the beatles might have made if they d followed the long and winding road into the 90s and chosen elo supremo jeff lynne as their producer as the mastermind behind roy orbison tom petty and george harrison s late eighties career revivals and great pal of george jeff was the right man in the right place with the right sunglasses and he played a blinder the 2000s but no sooner than the ghosts had been laid to rest when the news came in 2003 that the let it be lp was being de spectorised and reissued as let it be naked this time without the orchestral treacle and uninvited choir of angels added in 1970 without paul s consent the new version certainly had a raw quality missing from the original returning it to the spirit of the live only no overdubs promise they d made at the start of the project they also reinstated a criminal omission from let it be john s don t let me down while quietly shoving also rans dig it and maggie mae off the end of the bench but what about the final song this time they went for the hymn like let it be as the final dignified statement a comforting reconciliation with friendly ghosts a coming to terms with the past it was a healing song of hope and remembrance and the perfect note to end things on but as we well know by now no final song by the beatles stays final for long the let it be album was transformed again this time by peter jackson s magisterial get back docuseries it charmed and astonished us at every turn and showed that the beatles didn t fight all the time in 1969 just some of the time the series ended of course with the inspired rooftop performance ending on their third run at get back they practiced that one a lot as anyone who s watched all 468 minutes will testify considering that their hands were freezing on that cold january day in west london the performances are miraculously tight and soulful john s pronounced i d like to thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and i hope we ve passed the audition it was the perfect ironical good humoured way to bow out or might have been the 2020s fast forward to june 2023 while chatting amiably to martha kearney on the bbc radio 4 today programme paul casually drops in that he s been working on a demo from john and had been using some new technology to clean it up it had the unmistakable whiff of another final song rewind to 1994 5 the origins were a second tape handed by yoko to paul that year and actually inscribed by john for paul it contained the song grow old with me another beautiful tune but already issued posthumously on john s 1984 milk and honey lp putting this final song to one side and after completing fellow final songs free as a bird and real love the threetles turned their attentions to the new final song now and then slated to open the third of the anthology compilations it was shelved after only an afternoon s work in 1995 unimpressed by the quality of the demo hampered by an obstinate mains hum that couldn t be separated from lennon s vocals george harrison threw in the towel declaring the demo f cking rubbish not even jeff lynne had a magic wand powerful enough to take a bad demo and make it better instead for the new final song on the last anthology compilation they added a beginning see what they did there a pleasant but ultimately surplus to requirements orchestral excursion from george martin which originally pre ambled ringo s don t pass me by from the white album and so that was that except of course it wasn t back to the 2000s cue the ecstatic chime of the chord of the century that opens a hard day s night the beatles were very good at opening and closing songs love was a show and album from 2006 a dizzying playful reimagining of the beatles legacy assembled by giles martin who had inherited all of his father s taste talent and charm accompanying the cirque du soleil spectacular of the same name this was as good as a beatles album should be but what about the final song this time they went for all you need is love as the final unifying anthem a manifesto statement love is all you need there it was then the real final song had been there all the time quietly waiting its turn as if to underline the point there was a mischievous little send off from john spliced in at the end this is johnny rhythm just saying good night to yous all and god bless yous but the beatles being the beatles would insist on a last coda join us back in 2023 paul made no secret over the years of his intention to complete now and then to finish it off one of these days and that s what he and ringo did albeit with the full blessing of yoko ono lennon and olivia harrison helped by the magic ears and knob twiddling of giles martin who s done so much to restore the beatles recordings to their full glory updating some of the earlier more eccentric mixes but why has paul felt the need to open pandora s box once again surely not for the money or to give the reissued and expanded red and blue compilations a sales boost but perhaps because it was so intensely personal after all john s final words to him in person were think about me every now and then old friend this was paul fulfilling a promise to a dear friend thanks to sound source separation technology the magic wand jeff didn t have in 1995 they ve finally been able to clean up the tape john left behind for paul giles has brought his own considerable powers to the party along with the magic cauldron of the beatles own recordings with harmonies borrowed from because eleanor rigby and here there and everywhere for the new recording there s a tantalizing prospect in store add to john s still potent writing powers from 1979 paul s unmatched musical invention ringo s inimitable drumming and there s only one man missing george crucially they ve made full use of that afternoon s work he put in during the nineties the beatles have had more final songs than number ones and they ve had plenty of those 20 in all and they re deserving of another but maybe this really is the final word christopher james is an author collage artist and poet he won the 2008 national poetry competition his latest poetry pamphlet is the storm in the piano maytree press 2022 1 comment june 9 2023 uncaged birds trying their wings review of love leans over the table by rosie jackson two rivers press where to begin with this luminous collection from rosie jackson perhaps with the boisterous sobbings of margery kempe which i had the privilege to hear the poet read at the national poetry competition prize giving this year of all the winning poems this was perhaps the most arresting an intense tour de force that depicts a woman and mother of fourteen who has given everything to faith to her children and to the world if she doesn t sleep it s because god circles her quarried pelvis like a buzzard she s burdened with the weight of love as if she is carrying all of the world s belief and devotion the flood of images and metaphors is almost overwhelming there are no stanzas no let up and it has a breathless depth and density it s almost a book in itself in fact rosie revealed at her reading the poem began as a novel and the subsequent compression gives the poem a diamond like quality a forest crushed into a single gem the woman who lives at the back of the quaker meeting house another vivid pen portrait is the spare antithesis to this the language and form here is sparse mirroring the woman herself she crops her hair like spikes on a scrubbing brush the poet admires perhaps envies her contented ascetic life as she sits in her doorway to sew a quilt as white and green as a fields of daisies does not eat much does not fear the company of the dead spends her days uprooting weeds in the graveyard she has something money can t buy peace she doesn t seem to suffer margaret s weight of expectation and feeling the couplets allow space and light through the poem faith and the poet s relationship with it bound up with early revolt her parents religious zealousness is one of the most compelling themes of the book letter to nietzsche is a coming to terms with her early rejection of god where once she made her own god of the man who declared god is dead she now sees him for the person he was mortal uncertain and afraid like the rest of us i learned for the first time how very ill you were migraines despair dementia while he made arguments for the darkness of atheism over the light of faith the very act of denial seems to have crushed him mentally and physically the poet speaks movingly of her own journey of self discovery and realisation like so much of this book there s beauty regret and acute self awareness here what a long time it can take to wake up i missed fifty years of cherry blossom mocking their faith broke my parents hearts the ability to see things from all sides hard learned from time and experience make these poems empathetic epiphanies there s a sort of peace in these meditations that translates to the reader it gives the collection an astonishingly honest intimate and at times cathartic quality these are narratives overheard from the confession box secular prayers of self realisation it s impossible to give a full sense of the variety and colour of this book in a short review except in glimpses but be assured there are few weeds among these wildflowers wayside is a vivid memory of childhood walking for hours along disused railway tracks with my book my bag of apples striding over black sleepers we can instantly relate to the solitary reverie the bookish observant child already alive to nature language and the mystery of other people s lives there are intimations of the tribulations of life to come the child marvels at the willow herbs that sprouted down the edge of cinder tracks and reveals i loved how they took their chance how coal dust couldn t stop them there s a parallel with the life spirit of the child herself already resilient and wary of the thousand things that sully our days there are laments and sorrows in this book too but tempered with love and the consolation of beauty and the prospect of salvation john donne dreams his still born son lives is one of my favourite poems in rosie s marvelous book it s simultaneously a lament and a resurrection and spoken in donne s voice he conjures his lost son back into life with exacting detail like all children you break things teeth bones your mother s heart but he goes far beyond this the fantasy traces another version of reality where the boy lives all the senses are at play which makes this dream all the more vivid the boy likes swimming in icy water and when he speaks donne can hear my own warm vowels but the vision is temporal fleeting as fragile as life itself many times in dreams i lose sight of you the poem speaks beyond the poem to anyone who has loved and lost or perhaps never had the chance the heartbreak is made all the more intense by the fact donne never knew the child at all he is entirely a creation of donne s imagination necessarily coloured by impressions of himself you have my long fingered hands there s also an amusing unconscious revealing of donne s ego i fancy your footsteps sound on bare boards where you tread back and forth reciting poems but the pay off is brutal you d make a good thief as you did when you stole your mother from me but love forgives everything revealing that his devotion to god pales against the love he has for his lost wife and son the poem has all the tenderness and heartbreak of ben johnson s on my first son farewell my child of my right hand and joy my sin was too much hope of these lov d boy but the poem is utterly original and as much a testament to rosie s powers of imagination as donne s a magical act of poetic ventriloquism this is a...