It was 45 years ago today, well, yesterday, that Old Fred ventured from a war-torn Pepperland to Liverpool to enlist the help of four musicians against the evil music-hating Blue Meanies.
Pepperland had been sieged by anti-music missiles, Apple Bonkers, Butterfly Stomers, Clowns, Snapping Turtle Turks and the dreaded Flying Glove. Their national band, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club’s Band, was locked in a bubble that could not be breached. The Lord Mayor was at wit’s end. Four score and 32 bars ago, Pepperland was founded by a group of traveling musicians who’d made it there in a Yellow Submarine. That ship would have to save the musical republic again.
Who but who better than The Beatles could rescue the peace loving Pepperlandians from a fate worse than death, life without music. The Beatles were at their peak at the time. They were “the Beatles of popular music.” Even then. They traversed the seas of Green, Time, Science and Consumer Goods, picked up Nowhere Man Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D., in the Sea of Nothing and went to battle with the evil Blue Meanies. Armed only with a little love, the lads from Liverpool passed as Blueish to infiltrate their ranks, let the air out of the bubble by cracking two eggs and stirring light and beat the Blue Meanies back, Only to find there were newer and Bluer meanies still at large. They went out singing.
Yellow Submarine is a classic animation. One of the best ever. Screw Disney. Those stories were too scary. When my kids were born I lived a teletubby free existence by showing them Yellow Submarine, Nightmare Before Christmas and The South Park Movie.
The Beatles had made the movies A Hard Day’s Night, Help and Magical Mystery Tour and still owed two more films on their movie contract with United Artists. They would end that contract with a documentary on their breakup, Let It Be. Yellow Submarinewas made by the same people who made sixties Beatle Cartoons, Al Brodax and Co. The Beatles themselves only make a cameo appearance a the end, but John Lennon said they were involved enough to do drawings for it. Yellow Submsarine was based on a song Paul McCartney wrote for Ringo to sing and one of the screenwriters was Erich Siegel, who would go on to write Love Story. And not to be confused with Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
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