Sam Leach - KEEP
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Hey Sam and all! Hope you all have a FAB weekend!
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cbimbi:
Hi, 21st, now that I have some time I´ll take my guitar and try to make a cover of your songs. Sorry I dont know how is this thing of putting sound in internet, but if I get famous you may listen on MTV
Hi CBimbi, today is a special day for me!. This morning I've had my first official "NO" LOL, I even celebrate it.
It was a Barcelona record label calling me on my mobile and saying "That's not our style"-"Well, Ok". Anyway is my first "contact" to that world, they don't use to call, It means that they have listen to it. The thing is that is... possible... that next Monday I'll get some call from some of the other record labels. They are in Madrid, so postal service took more time to deliver the CD. So I got to the chance next week to have some news. Any new is a good new. If the first one has called me... I think I'll have some call from the rest. And if they don't... 20 or 30 cds more to travel around Spain. Cbimbi... and Sam, and Gipsy, and ...k... and Tori... I have the absolute faith that I will get it. Dunno when, how, where or why. I don't know about guitar tabs, I've sent you the chords, so I think you can make the tabs for the songs. Hey! if you are on MTV I must have royalties
. Well, if you are in MTV with a song of mine it will made me be wanted for the labels anyway
. LOL. I don't want... royalties, I want the YES. Dunno how, or when or... you know. I'm very very stubborn. "fame and money" is not the thing... is they telling you: "Go, you're a musician".
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Smile Starr Smile! or as Hall and Oates would say Sara Smile!
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okay here i go again!
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Good one Starr. Let us sing Let'Em In. I'll start Somoen's knocking at the door somebody's ringing the bell,someone's knocking at the door somebody's ringing the bell,do me a favor open the door and Let'Em In oh yeah! Now you continue.
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Hi everyone & Sam Sam just got a copy of the Liverpool Echo's special 40th anniversary Beatles special -- good article in it involving you. Cheers! Mike
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Hi Mike Nice to hear from you...I've been wondering where you'd got to. I've been that busy I didn't realise the 40th Anniversary issue was out yet. Can you scan and e-mail the article ?? Cheers. Sam.
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Hi Sam I'll see if I can find someone with a scanner if not i'll find another way to get it to you. Sorry need to get on the site more -- the new site requires me to get off my AOL browser which isn't always convienent -- been busy, too with my new house -- which needs lots of work, including painting! I did have the time today to shoot an email to Philip Norman -- who as you know wrote Shout. He just wrote a farily negative article about Macca. That and an old Beatle fan issue which I found where he in an interview basically said that people should look at Macca in a similar way to Ringo. it was Lennon's band, he was the genius, they let Macca have a few token songs but he was nothing special. That article really grated on me -- so I sent him the following email Philip Read your article about McCartney -- I think it's amusing and I guess somewhat appropriate that of all the Beatles biographers -- they found you to write the article -- simply because I've read a lot of stuff about the Beatles but your book and subsequent interviews are the only stuff I've read which claims that Macca was basically irrelevant to the success of the Beatles and that it was Lennon all the way. Actually, you took it a step further in a Beatlefan article I read where you basically said that Macca was given a few token songs alas Ringo but that was basically it for him. That's an interesting perspective -- when the Beatles were making Revolver -- poor old Macca was doing those light weight barely passable songs such as Here There and Everywhere, Got To Get You Into My Life, For No One, Eleanor Rigby -- which was crap and didn't hold a candle to She Said She Said & Doctor Robert. It must have been interesting to be in the Beatles studio when recording Let It Be -- Macca must have come in with the Long & Winding Road, Get Back, and Let it Be -- while the other Beatles gasped and said all right we will put those songs on because Macca needs a few token ones but what really holds the album up is Dig a Pony and One After 909. I could go on and on Yesterday, Hey Jude, Fool on the Hill -- if only Macca didn't put that rubbish out and we had more songs like Revolution 9 the Beatles reputation would have been even bigger. Anyway, am I being sarcastic, of course. Personally, I think both Beatles are brilliant. It's hard for me to take you too seriously based on your previous assessment of Macca. I actually really enjoyed your book -- but your assessment of Macca brought it down -- and sorry the fact that the periodical decided to use you to asses Macca's recent behavior -- tells me that they are aiming for a hatchet job. Although, you did actually give him some complements in the article which was surprising. Back to your book I always gathered that either you just love John Lennon to pieces and thought it would serve him to denigrate Macca to make up for other books (The Beatles most famous' biographer Hunter Davies alluded to Macca being the more talented one, and their producer George Martin hinted in his book that he slightly preferred Macca) or you just can't stand Macca. Regardless, it is a privilege writing to you -- despite the books flaw (in my humble opinion) its a real good read. In terms of your article it was tough for me to digest coming from someone who I perceive to be a professional Macca basher. Cheers! Mike
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Here's the article I responded, too. Frankly, my previous email was more driven by my annoyance at his Beatlefan article than this one What's eating you Macca? In a letter to the rock veteran, Philip Norman charts the highs and lows of Paul McCartney's popularity. Dear Macca, The millions of people who regard you as pop music's patron saint will have been shocked and disillusioned by your recent behavior - though, as The Beatles' biographer and a long-time observer of your remarkable solo career, it comes as somewhat less of a surprise to me. Last week, you unleashed a stream of foulmouthed abuse at a photographer who had the temerity to try to take your picture during a late-night visit to London's Tower Bridge, where the illusionist David Blaine is suspended aloft in his plexiglass prison cell. According to the photographer, two of your companions, who strongly resembled 'minders', tried to intimidate him when he refused to hand over his film. Not content with that, you were blisteringly rude to a bystander who asked if he could shake your hand. Even David Blaine came in for a bashing when you loudly referred to him as a 'stupid c***'. Later, in more familiar McCartney style, you tried to smile away the episode as 'a boys' night-out' and protested that you hadn't really meant publicly to fire your PR man for having apparently set up the media ambush. But all your formidable spin-doctoring gifts could not undo the ugly, unnecessary scene. Like many others in your superstar firmament, you have the ability to shrug off uncomfortable truths, abetted by the legions of yes-men with whom you surround yourself and whose sole function is to tell you that you are infallibly wonderful every day of your life. But I wonder whether the David Blaine incident may have led even you to ponder on the decline in your reputation over these past few years - and ponder, too, the extent to which you may be almost deliberately unravelling one of the most carefully tended images in showbusiness history. As a Beatle, you seemed as close to perfection as a young man could be. A brilliant songwriter, a uniquely poignant vocalist, cherubically goodlooking, funny, charming, polite, wellspoken and considerate to fans, you seemed to have everything. You were a secular Saint Paul, and the world and the world's media ate out of your hand. Well, what a difference 35 years and £1billion ($1.6 million) make. In those days, it was hard to find a McCartney headline that didn't sing your praises even more lyrically than you sang them yourself. Today, it's hard to find one that doesn't portray you as egotistical, grasping, small-minded, self-deluding, more than slightly absurd - and now, to cap it all, as moody, rude and foul-mouthed as any delinquent from pop's kindergarten. Consider the awful Press you were already getting when you decided to take that ill-advised 'boys' night-out'. Even your old friend and rival, Sir Mick Jagger, with his wrinkly stage antics and puerile pursuit of women a third his age, could hardly match it. On your recent American tour, you were reported to be behaving like the worst rock megalomaniacs of the Led Zeppelin era. A special request added to your backstage requirements issued to promoters forbade meat to be served to you - or eaten by anyone in the road crew. Above all, you portrayed yourself as just an ordinary musician on the road, who would pile aboard the tour bus with the rest of your band. However, I'm told that as you came offstage each night, the band were expected to line up and give you a 'spontaneous' ovation. The fact is that, where you're concerned, we have all swallowed an illusion as skillful as any ever created by David Blaine. All that's happening now is that the mask is being allowed to slip. For, even in those magic, innocent early Beatle times, you were never remotely like the smiling boy-angel the world took you for. You had just the same young man's foibles as John, George and Ringo, as well as a good few peculiar to yourself. The melting moon-face and sad puppy-dog eyes already masked a ruthless ambition to make it, with or without the other three. Remember how, even in the band's earliest days of playing gigs for ha'pence on Merseyside and the Cheshire Wirral, you were always known by the others as 'the Star'? The niceness for which you became famous was not wholly illusory. All four of you Beatles were indeed incredibly nice and, more incredibly, managed to remain so, even after being penned in a goldfish bowl far worse than anything David Blaine could contrive. The difference was that, while the others often gave way to understandable temper or frustration, you could never bear to drop that honeyed manner, whatever your true feelings. Amid the trauma of The Beatles' break-up, your wisest move - though few at the time recognized it as such - was to wed American photographer Linda Eastman. The marriage proved a spectacular success, allowing you to combine your globally successful post-Beatles band Wings, featuring Linda on keyboards, with a stable home life known to few others in that echelon of the music business. Together you raised four children to be civilized human beings rather than over-indulged rock-brats. With shy, dignified Linda around - apart from a few aberrant drugs-busts, one of which got you briefly locked up in Tokyo in 1980 - your public profile was irreproachable. The problem was that, jointly directing your band and your profit-rich publishing company MPL, you became ever more of a ruthless perfectionist and autocrat, elbowing aside anyone who threatened to steal even a molecule of your limelight. Have you ever paused to wonder, for instance, why your feature film "Give My Regards To Broad Street" proved to be such a turkey? Quite simply, it was because, regardless of either the plot or the quality of screen actors you hired, you insisted on making yourself the soft focus centre of virtually every shot. Yet, despite all these rumors and rumblings, your image endured - that of cheerful, cheeky 'Mister Thumbs-Up', an unspoiled boynext-door who still greeted each day with a Beatley cry of 'Great!' Linda's death from cancer in 1998 and your obvious devastation unleashed a fresh tide of love and goodwill which diminished when you met and proposed to former topless model Heather Mills, a woman young enough to be your daughter. It is obviously unfair to compare your new wife with Linda, even though both experienced exactly the same backlash for daring to marry a man whom a large part of the world's womanhood regard as their personal property. Much of Heather's unpopularity may well be undeserved - but she does have an unfortunate knack of compounding it almost every time she opens her mouth. Heather has received much of the blame for the new, abrasive Macca we're seeing, and certainly the symptoms are those which often tend to occur in a 61-year-old man with a much younger wife. Where once you carefully limited your public appearances, you'll now willingly escort Heather to the opening of an envelope. Your hair-dye is so obvious that, when you last played at the Oscars, it received an unofficial award as the evening's best special effect. Swearing at a photographer may also strike you as youthful and macho, though I suspect you'd be far more upset if photographers began to ignore you. So determined are you for Heather to be accepted that you even let her give you critiques of your night's performance, a privilege you seldom gave to your fellow Beatles - and one which I doubt Linda ever exercised. Recently, you refused a music industry lifetime achievement award because you said it implied your career was over and you had nothing left to give to music. But hanging onto youth is only part of the reason why, despite all your colossal achievements, you continued to push yourself to such an extent, touring for months on end and pumping out records as well as writing classical symphonies, exhibiting your (not very good) paintings and publishing your (at best mediocre) poetry. It seems you cannot rest until you've persuaded us that our typecasting of The Beatles all those years ago was so completely wrong; that you weren't just the 'nice' one while John Lennon was the arty and edgy one; that you can do anything John ever did, and still more. That said, it's almost some comfort to us lesser beings that, even if you are Sir Paul McCartney, with that vast pile-up of achievement and honors behind you, you can still be insecure enough to wake in the night, sweating and fuming over the running-order of a credit on a record made almost 40 years ago. In other words, Sir Paul, you're only human. And that's what you're belatedly starting to show us. Yours, Philip Norman (NOTE If you would like to send your comments on above article to the Daily Mail, here is the email address feedback@femail.co.uk
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Excellent piece Mike. I didn't realise Philip had written this rubbish. Perhaps I'd better write to him also. Will you e-mail me his address and/or e-mail. Cheers. Sam.
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Thanks Sam -- if you read down the article of his which I just posted -- it includes an email address.
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Hi MIke It shocks me to see an educated man like Philip Norman writing in the style of an uneducated and jealous lout. I'm writing to him tomorrow. Cheers. Sam.
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Hi Sam Great, go get him! Cheers! Mike
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mikeskapla:
But hanging onto youth is only part of the reason why, despite all your colossal achievements, you continued to push yourself to such an extent, touring for months on end and pumping out records as well as writing classical symphonies, exhibiting your (not very good) paintings and publishing your (at best mediocre) poetry. It seems you cannot rest until you've persuaded us that our typecasting of The Beatles all those years ago was so completely wrong; that you weren't just the 'nice' one while John Lennon was the arty and edgy one; that you can do anything John ever did, and still more. Yours, Philip Norman
I have nothing to say about the rest of the article because they are private life issues, not musical. If that man think that Paul was "just the nice one" and Lennon the artist... I guess that man has not played a single chord or a melody in his whole life. And if has played them it seems he has no ears. (All you need is ears, George Martin). Paul is not trying to... top Lennon or even trying to be similar... He's Paul with his virtues and faults, like everyone. How many classic symphonies wrote John Lennon?. Paul is doing live the songs he wrote with the Beatles, a thing that I think almost all the fans are happy to see. He even critize him to release an album. So, he would be a better person if he retired from music? I think he is STILL the best songwriter in the world. And you only got to see him live to know about how great he is. I don't mess with the paparazzi stuff because that is for the pros... But that story of Paul as the John's shadow and an "empty" part of the Beatles... well, he got to LISTEN to recent Paul live's albums and that emptiness he has... NANANANA HEY PAUL!
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well i didnt need to bump this thread today it's been pretty active, hey there everyone!
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Hi Sara as you know I replied to you and sang LEt'Em In. I was so happy to see Paul sing it live on the Red Aquare special. Mike I'll ignroe Phillip as Sam has told me to. He said fo me to ignroe people who put Paul down as it wil make it worse for me. Anyway I ahve some good news for you,I talked toa friend of mine on Friday night and he said he listened to magical Mystery Tour on the way down here and loved it and I told him how people regard John as the true talent and Macca as too soft and he said they are both very different but very talented. He said Paul is more of a poppy guy but writes great music. That made my dayd. HE also plays guitar too. He prefers more upbeat music but admitted to thinking Macca as a great songwriter. As for Phillip he is jealous of Macca that is all I can say.
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Hi Mike and everyone on this thread. This is the reply I've sent to Philip Norman. Cheers. Sam. (See below). Mr. Norman When you interviewed me for `Shout' in 1979 you had a completely different opinion about Paul McCartney to the character assassination you've just carried out on him. Doubtless that suited your purposes at that time but to me it now illustrates your utter deceit. In your totally one-sided article you throw in as many insults as you can think up. I say `think up' because your spurious `report' on Macca has words such as `I'm told' and `it's been reported'. This clearly proves your article is peppered with hearsay. No one in the Beatles or from Merseybeat EVER referred to Paul as `the Star' as you falsely claim. In case people that may read this piece don't know I've both promoted and been a friend of The Beatles from way back. Your accusations are totally unfounded and without merit. Then you try to attack his personal life. Paul stayed faithful and happy with Linda, brought his children up admirably, not allowing his fame and wealth to spoil them. Instead of becoming a tax exile like Mick Jagger or retreating to America as others whom YOU admire did, he stayed in Britain, paid his taxes and brought many millions back into this country with his highly successful albums and world tours. That is why he is now Sir Paul and deserves our respect if not yours. Despite being over 60 he doesn't sit around resting on his many laurels but is quite happy to risk his reputation by going back on tour, writes a musical Opus, poetry, paints and continues to help and support Charities around the World. By happily indulging in these new and risky ventures, he knows full well that envious `poison-pens' such as yours will slag him off and try to denigrate his achievements. But he goes on..and on..and on And you can't stand it !! Yes he thinks enough of his appearance to dye his hair and dress trendy, marry a young woman who is now having his baby. And isn't frightened to let people know his opinion about important matters. And what's wrong with that....I'd like to know. He has NEVER ignored his roots, coming back to Liverpool as often as he can. He endeavors to remain the same Macca that I once knew... ...and he has succeeded. Put you bias away and take a closer look at the beautiful songs and music he has written. Paul was the main inspiration on `Sergeant Pepper' the most innovative concept album of all time and which caused Mick Jagger and Roger Daltry to re-think their careers. Paul has composed more quality music than anyone else in modern History. And think again of the irony that Yoko earns more from songs such as `Yesterday' than Macca does. Whilst you're in a minority of one, unfortunately the position you hold by being a `writer' enables you to attack a nice guy like Paul who hopefully won't lower himself to bother replying to your daft and nonsensical claims. I just hope the Mail grants this e-mail, or others like it, the same prominence you received. Yours in utter disgust. Sam Leach.
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Hey Paulfan! Thanks for sharing that, well Paul is a great songwriter, as for phillip yes it's best to ignore him i've learned that here some you just have to ignore! You'll save a lot of time and energy than getting into a huge debate with them. Maybe your friend can come and check out Paul's site sometime!
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You are welcome Sara. Yes Sam told me to ignore people who bash Paul. I don't feel like getting into too many debates anymore. I did it for tow years on here. The only thing is we shouldn't let peopel push us around. As for my friend yes I would love for him to hcekc out this site only thing is he is a very busy man and may not have alot of time for checking out websties or chatting. I only talk to him once in a while. He is Mike's age so maybe him anad Mike would get along.