The 1970 breakup of the Beatles was a traumatic time for John, George, Paul and Ringo. Each dealt with it in their own way. Paul lived the life of a recluse on the Mull of Kintyre, whereas John resorted to psychoanalysis to get rid of his demons. His first, brilliantly stark album, is the direct result. 

John consulted the American psychoanalyst Arthur Janov and subjected himself to the extreme ‘Primal Scream’ therapy. Janov was a follower of Freud and Jung, believing that adult problems can be found in a child’s formative years. His therapy stripped away all the protective psychological barriers to determine where the childhood problems lay.

Once any hurt was exposed, the patient was encouraged to release the pain and frustration with a huge ‘Primal Scream’. John Lennon – Plastic Ono Band was straight from the psychiatrists couch, and Lennon released his pain, screaming through intensely personal tracks such as ‘Mother’, ‘I found Out’, ‘Working Class Hero’ and of course ’God’ where Lennon upset millions of Beatle fans……

“I don’t believe in Beatles…..I just believe in me, and Yoko, and that’s reality………..The dream is over, What can I say? The dream is over, Yesterday. I was the dreamweaver, But now I’m reborn. I was the Walrus, But now I’m John. And so dear friends, you just have to carry on………………….The dream is over…………..” God by John Lennon

It still upsets me when I hear those words, but the whole album is a musical masterpiece, a complete contrast to the much happier ‘Imagine’ and ‘Mind Games’ albums. If you have any interest in the Beatles and John Lennon, you need to hear this album – It’s a unique experience.

John McNally 
PS. If you want to know just how poignant this album is, listen to the short fade out track “My Mummy’s Dead”:

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Nowhere Boy is a great new film dealing with something rarely covered in books, and never portrayed in film – John Lennon’s childhood. It brilliantly manages to evoke the atmosphere of suburban life, circa 1960.

The Director Sam Taylor-Wood manages to avoid the obvious cliche of telling Lennon’s story through his and the Beatles songs, instead there is plenty of the 1950’s music that inspired the Group during their formative teenage years.

There are only two musical references that are out of sync with the period. The opening credits starts with a loud guitar chord from ‘A Hard Days Night’ and fades to the fans screams of those later years. The closing credits finish with Lennon’s track ‘Mother’ from his first solo LP, (although the version used in the film was a studio out-take).

The Mother track was the most poignant, and the lyrics are basically the films entire plot;

“Mother, you had me but I never had you.
I wanted you but you didn’t want me……..
Father, you left me but I never left you.
I needed you but you didn’t need me………”


I’m a long-time Beatle fan so I already knew the whole story, but I was reaching for the Kleenex tissues long before the end. Even if you don’t know Lennon’s background, if you like a good tear-jerker, this is the film for you.

To understand the origins of the  Beatle phenomena, you only need to watch two films; ‘Nowhere Boy’ dealing with the formative childhood years, and ‘Backbeat’ covering the Hamburg and Cavern years where the Beatles honed their stagecraft. Both films are historically accurate, but more importantly great entertainment as well.

John McNally

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The artist Steve Ditko collaborated with writer Stan Lee to forge a unique style for Spider-Man that the film director Sam Raimi has reinterpreted for the screen.

Although Stan Lee created the character and wrote the origin story, Steve Ditko felt restricted by Lee’s editorship and asked if he could plot the Spiderman stories. Lee eventually agreed to this, although no other Marvel artist in the early 1960s had won this concession.

Ditko would hand over the completed Spiderman illustrations and Stan Lee would insert the dialogue. This created the unique Spiderman style with numerous pages dealing soley with Peter Parker’s private life, instead of battling the latest super-villain, which tended to happen in other Marvel titles.

The partnership lasted for over 30 issues until Ditko resigned over the direction the Green Goblin character should take.

Marvel recognised both Ditko’s style and the huge sales generated for Spiderman, and the next artist, John Romita, continued very much in the Ditko vein.
 
My favourite Spiderman story  is “The Final Chapter” in issue 33, and I’m not the only one who like this. Stan Lee himself cites this Ditko illustrated Spider-Man as his favourite:
The cover of Spiderman #33 has always fascinated me. It’s such a simple image yet Steve Ditko manages to imbue it with a real sense of restrained power. The cover shows Spiderman trapped under a huge block of metal, the floor flooded and more water pouring down over him.

Inside the comic it takes Ditko numerous panels and many pages to show how Spiderman finally struggles free. By the time he succeeds the reader feels as exhausted as Spiderman! This multiple panel, extended plot device was typical of Ditko’s unique style.

I have painted many different comic characters using oils on canvas, but it was only when I painted the cover of Spiderman #33 that I realised just how good Steve Ditko was. Although Ditko uses simple lines, it takes genius to capture the sense of power that the image contains.

If you are interested in comic book artwork take a look at my website: http://www.popartoilpaintings.com/Steve-Ditko

John McNally

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Orion still dominates the southern night sky and is one of the easiest constellations to spot. Just look for 3 stars in a row – that’s Orion the Hunters belt. These 3 stars are good pointers for finding other constellations.

If you follow the line to the right you’ll reach Taurus the Bull and the Hyades Cluster.

Carry on beyond the Hyades and you’ll find the Pleiades (or ‘Seven Sisters’). This is a tight grouping of seven stars, but if you look through binoculars or a telescope you will actually see hundreds of stars.

Look above Taurus and you will see Auriga the Charioteer, with the yellow star Capella at its top.

The top left hand star of Orion is the red giant Betelgeuse. Carry on up past here to the left and you will reach Gemini,  representing Twins of the Ziodiac signs.

Below Gemini and to the immediate left of Betelgeuse is Canis Minor, one of Orion the Hunters dogs. This small constellation contains the star Procyon which is only 10 light years from Earth.

Mars is the best planet to see this month. It is prominent in the southern evening sky and will be at it’s highest point around midnight. From 9th January it will be in the constellation of Cancer.

Jupiter can be seen early evening in the south-west, but it sets by 8pm. Saturn rises in the middle of the night at 2am and its rings are slightly open for those with telescopes.

John McNally

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“In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree…” Kublai Khan is probably best known in the UK for the famous poetic fantasy by Coleridge. However the truth behind the legend of Kublai Khan is even more fantastic than the poem suggests.

Kublai Khan was a thirteenth century Mongolian prince who inherited the largest land empire in history from his grandfather, Genghis Khan – and doubled it! His empire reached from the Pacific to the Urals, from Siberia to Afghanistan – 60% of all Asia, one-fifth of the world’s inhabited land area. He was perhaps the most powerful man who ever lived.

Kublai Khan only seized power in his forties but he never questioned Genghis Khan’s belief that Heaven had given his people the world. His first Capital city was Xanadu on the Mongolian grasslands, but he soon realised that China was the key to a world empire due to its massive population.

He made Beijing his new Capital and after twenty years of war became the first ‘barbarian’ to conquer all of China. I was fascinated by the political and military use of barbarism that the Mongols employed. The Mongolian army would march up to a walled city and send messengers inside.

“Open the gates and your lives will be spared. Resist, and we will slaughter every man woman and child”. If the city fought back, then the Mongolian army would simply camp outside the walls for anything from 3 to 5 years until resistance crumbled. They would then carry out their threat and slaughter the city population.

Word soon spread around China, so the Mongolian army very rarely had to fight!  City gates were opened as soon as the army arrived, and the conquest of China was only delayed by the speed at which the army could march around the vast territory.

If you want to know more about Kublai Khan I can highly recommend the fascinating biography by John Man.

John McNally

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I saw a shooting star tonight, which always cheers me up. I have seen more shooting stars than most people, because whenever it’s a clear night sky I’m always looking up, usually trying to pick out my favourite constellations. Seeing shooting stars is a byproduct of that, (along with a cricked neck)!

What are Shooting Stars? Well, the first thing that they ARE NOT is Stars! Stars are huge nuclear fusion furnaces like our Sun. Shooting Stars are normally just bits of dust entering our atmosphere.

Shooting stars are usually no larger than a grain of sand. However, they are travelling at thousands of miles per hour, and quickly burn up in our atmosphere. That’s when we can see the ’shooting star’ effect.

Shooting stars are technically ‘meteors’ though only larger particles are normally refered to as a meteor. An object the size of an apple travelling at up to 50 miles per second would take longer to burn up in the atmosphere and you may be lucky enough to actually see flames. (I have seen this twice in 40 years of star gazing).

Some meteors can be quite large, and they may not burn out completely, reaching the ground with an explosion. These objects are known as Meteorites. They are quite rare, and usually fall into the sea. However really huge meteorites have hit the Earth.

In 1908 a meteorite fell in Siberia and the impact blew trees down for 60 miles around. The explosion was heard up to 500 miles away, and even 100 miles from the impact, people were knocked over by the shock wave!  This incident whilst rare, was entirely natural, but features in a number of conspiracy/alternative science theories.

Keep looking up, on dark clear nights, and you will see Shooting Stars. Happy star gazing.

John McNally

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The last album written by Roger Waters for Pink Floyd was ‘The Final Cut’. The title had a number of meanings, including the fact that Waters would leave the band after this album.

I have all Pink Floyd’s albums on vinyl, but unfortunately I no longer play vinyl records, which meant I had to replace them with CDs. (What a great thing new formats are for record companies, they keep reselling the same music, to the same customers, but in a different form)!

When I looked at the Final Cut CD my heart sank. There was an extra track. Record companies often try to ‘add value’ to a CD reissue by including extra tracks, which are usually inferior demo’s or studio out-takes.

The reason my heart sank, is that this extra track had been placed in the middle of the original song sequence. In fact it had been inserted as the fourth song, which would obviously completely change my listening experience. It would certainly destroy my memory of the original album.

I still bought the CD but it was with some trepidation that I played it….Then, joy of joys! It was a fantastic track!! In fact I think it is the best thing on the album, and I just wondered why it hadn’t been included on the vinyl version?

The song is called “When the Tigers Broke Free”, and is an account of how Roger Water’s father died at the Battle of Anzio, during the Second World War. A British infantry company were ordered to fight, and delay the advance of a German Tiger tank division, with the inevitable consequence.

Roger Waters wrote the song after clearing his Mothers house and finding an old shoe box packed with photos of his dad, military medals, and a telegram from the King reporting his death. 

As Roger Waters wrote …”and it makes my eyes go dim, to remember that his Majesty had signed, with his own RUBBER STAMP”!

John McNally

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I have always been anti-TV. I love reading, so having a TV on in the room interferes with that. Whenever I watch a lot of TV, (more than an hour), I’m left with an empty, “what a waste of time” , feeling. I have never been able to put my finger on why I felt like this, until now.

The psychologist Oliver James has written a book called “Affluenza“, which is an analysis of the causes of depression in a materially affluent world. On page 284 he looks at the effect of TV;

“Studies show that the mental state we enter whilst watching TV is a passive, floating, vicarious consciousness. The emotional and sometimes visible animation of a person attending live theatre or ballet or opera, or when watching a deeply moving film, or when reading a great novel, are very rarely present…………

……….for the vast majority of the time, watching TV is a form of dead, second-hand living”.

Thank you Oliver James, for articulating what I have always felt. I like watching films, but NOT on TV! That’s the reason I called my blog film category ‘Cinema’, because that’s where all films are made to be seen. Not on a little (or even a very large) box, in somebodies front room.

When you go to the cinema to watch a film, there are no interruptions to your enjoyment of the story. There are no telephones going off, no breaks to make a cup of tea, no knocks on your front door, no adverts, no-one talking to you.

It’s just you and the story enfolding in front of you. The wide screen means that even your peripheral vision is immersed in the film. The outside world is cut off, and you can completely lose yourself in the film.  

You can get all this for 50% off, if you go on Wednesday!

John McNally

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Leamington Spa is a beautiful town with a lot of night life, however for too long it didn’t have a large capacity, live music venue. Groups were confined to local pubs that had the space and the enthusiasm to host a live band.

This has thankfully changed! For the past 12 months Leamington Spa has a brand new live music venue called the Assembly. Although the venue is new, the building is not – it’s a beautiful 1926 Art Deco construction that has been lovingly restored by its new owners.

The theme of the interior design has been taken from the statue of a lady that has stood on top of the building since the 1920’s. When I talk about this to other Leamington residents, many of them are not aware of the statue. The Assembly is in a narrow road, and to see the statue you have to crane your neck back.

I have always been a star gazer, so looking up comes naturally to me. Since childhood I have been fascinated by the Assembly statue. I used to go to Saturday Morning pictures at the nearby Clifton Cinema, Spencer Street, in the 1960’s.

I spent my 1/6 pocket money (7.5 new pence) on sixpence for the bus fare, sixpence for the cinema, and sixpence for a bag of monkey nuts. When I was eating the monkey nuts I always gazed up with admiration at the statue on top of the Assembly.

The recent renovation designed by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, has the statue featured in the carpets, the wallpaper and in stained glass windows. The result is probably the best 1,000 capacity, live music venue, in the UK.

John McNally

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The psychologist Oliver James looks at the modern world and tries to answer the conundrum;

“Why is it that despite the Western World being materially richer than it has ever been before, the middle classes are suffering from high rates of depression, anxiety, addiction and ennui?”

He examines the problem in different Capitalist cultures from the UK  and USA, to Denmark, Singapore, New Zealand and Russia.

Refreshingly he not only identifies the problem, he offers solutions for a cure on a personal level.  He also invokes a political manifesto at the end of the book, which he admits has not a hope in Hell of ever being implemented! 

The Western World as a whole is gripped by a capitalist fervour where economic growth is the received wisdom.  Oliver James questions this, not only on a ‘green’ ecological basis, but also on a personal psychological front.

If we constantly have to consume, to get bigger houses, better cars, the latest computer and mobile phone, we have to work ever harder to fund these purchases. We end up living just to pay the massive mortgage, caused by the UK’s unhealthy obsession with property. 

Oliver James wonders why it is that if we have a house to live in, we need a bigger and better house, in a more fashionable neighbourhood? If we have already have a car that works perfectly OK, do we really need a new one?

Unfortunately James concludes that status is being sought though material possessions.

We have become possessed by our possessions. This is neither healthy or desirable. If we can free ourselves from ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ ,we have taken a step towards personal freedom and happiness.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to look at the society we live in from a fresh angle.

John McNally

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