Verses

The Story

Do you remember the legendary photographer Angus McBean who snapped the Beatles in the EMI building at the start and again at the end of their career for the unreleased ‘Get Back’ LP? Album cover? …Well, somewhere in a magazine, long since out of print, I found myself reading and being captivated by the conversations that apparently took place between The Fab Four during the second of these two photo-shoots...

Apparently, as they walked back down the Record Labels staircase, Ringo looked up at John, Paul and George, who were dragging their feet behind him and quipped, “you know, if me and George took over the song-writing responsibilities, we’d easily dream up a better album than anything the Lennon & McCartney duo could come up with!”
Laughing at this prospect, they walked through the EMI front doors, each Beatle disappearing into the dreary English evening and the idea escaped into thin air….

A few years later, after the Beatles had split, around about the time John was tapping his chin on his guitar whilst playing rhythm guitar on Bowie’s ‘Young Americans’ sessions, he remembered Ringo’s joke. So, John summoned Paul and with mischievous grins and a lot of red wine, they held up in a New York loft recording 5 new songs.

John & Paul then called up Ringo, played the recordings down the phone and before hanging up simply said, “Hi Ringo, put your money where your mouth is.” Ringo, thousands of miles away in the UK, immediately contacted George and convinced him to take up the challenge. Within a month they returned the phone call to John & Paul – flaunting a collection of their own songs down the receiver.

A month later, the four secretly came together over a long weekend, locked themselves in Abbey Road Studios and fuelled by wine, love and fond memories, mixed a new record called ‘VERSES.’

They named the album ‘Verses’ because on one side the tracks were written by John & Paul, while the other side was penned by Ringo and George. John couldn’t resist the play with words and spelt ‘Verses’ with an ‘E’ to emphasis the focus on the music rather than any competitive rivalry.

Over the following months after the initial excitement had died down, it dawned on them that as each of their solo careers were on the ascendance – credibility meant maintaining the clean break they had made a few years before. So, unfortunately for us, ‘Verses’ was shelved. It was and still is only brought out at private gatherings...

What does it sound like? No one except John, Paul, Ringo and George can tell you that. Nothing was ever leaked to the music press, but supposedly, just as Ringo’s little joke on the EMI staircase had sparked this surprise coda to The Beatles catalogue, he was also heard to have said (in response to Lennon’s joke that Ringo wasn’t even the best drummer in the Beatles)….”I was ready for ‘VERSES’ to hit the shops, but they were afraid that my finger-tapping guitar solos would eclipse John’s shite drumming.”

Wouldn't it be great if this was true...

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