mostly david ephgrave

If television programmes are to be believed, the Seventies were brown . As I was born in 1981, I'm unable to comment on this theory first-hand. Whilst being a couple of years shy of the opportunity to offer an eyewitness account, I’ve certainly seen a lot of secondary evidence.   A nything that wasn’t brown was a brownish-grey or orange. Take Columbo, for instance. I’m a big fan of the dishevelled detective, owning the complete series as a DVD box-set. There are two things I’ve learnt since watching so many episodes back-to-back: that instances of homicide in 1970s' Los Angeles were alarmingly high – and that most were committed to a sepia backdrop. It’s as if they’d decided to work to a very specific colour-scheme: nothing darker than Peter Falk’s cigar; nothing lighter than his raincoat.   If only the perpetrators had stuck to this formula with more rigidity, they could have got away with murder. A young David ...

Friday 8th August 1969. Just before noonish. Four world-famous faces convene outside EMI Studios in St. John’s Wood. Their bodies convene at the same location; it would have looked weird if they hadn't.  A stepladder is quickly set up in the centre of the main road, just a few yards from a zebra crossing. The four musicians wander down to it, the clean-shaven one kicks off his sandals and they then proceed to walk over the crossing a handful of times - the musicians, not the sandals - whilst a photographer up the ladder captures the moment. I’m referring to the cover shoot for The Beatles’ Abbey Road. Get it? Good. At that point the Fab Four were already at the tail-end of their collective career, only a few brief months from calling it a day.  They’d conquered the world (musically speaking), and in just seven years had transmuted from loveable moptops to less-loveable, even-moppier moptops – and, get this: none of them had yet r...