mostly david ephgrave

Despite being a bassist for twenty-five years, and probably considering it my first instrument (though that's a bit of a fluid subject), I've only ever owned one bass guitar: my trusty Tanglewood replica of a violin bass. So I think I was entitled to upgrade to a real Hofner, which I finally did this week. Arty Hofner shot (as it's known in the trade). I approached this purchase with guilt and trepidation, as I do when I buy anything significant, despite paying in instalments and not being expensive for what it is. Surely I'm allowed a new bass every quarter-century? Particularly when it's literally* for work. And yet I can't shake the sense that I'm treating myself at a time when money's tight (and that's before today's massive fall in the pound's value on the stock market, which I probably triggered by buying it). However, I bought it to be better equipped next time some muso work comes up. While my old bass has done remarkably well conside...

Today, I took the opportunity for a rare tour of Abbey Road Studios as a belated 40th birthday treat. And while I anticipated it would be emotional standing in the rooms where so much magic was committed to tape, I still wasn't quite prepared for the visceral impact. Not the first long-haired yob to enter the building. It's not just its connection to the Beatles that makes it such an extraordinary place. No other building on the planet has produced so much music that's woven into our collective consciousness. It's the invisible location of countless performances we know so well that often touch us deep in our soul, and the zebra crossing outside makes it easy to arrive on foot. Though whether you choose to wear shoes is up to you. My arrival. I first visited that pedestrian landmark in 1996ish as a teenager with my guitarist friend, Rich. I'd been desperate to go there for years and would drop hints about it whenever I was in London for something touristy. I've ...

It's with no small fanfare - or at least with a faint anal parp - that the first episode of 'The McCartney McAlphabet' is out. I'm proud of it and am looking forward to doing more. The second episode's already in the can (not that there is a can) and needs editing, but it's good to at least have the show up and running instead of just a load of social media accounts with no product to push. And aside from a few syncing problems I had when I putting our conversation together, making it was an easy process. Recording our chat was fun and comes over well; as I've mentioned, the topic's not something I have to stretch to discuss and the whole thing's a labour of love. All that's left now is the hope people enjoy it. It's surprising how positive the online Beatles community have been. We've only had encouraging comments on the concept so far and I hope the content will live up to this. As with Doctor Who, I know that Beatles fans can be exact...

Planning Clary Saddler's and my new Paul McCartney-themed podcast The McCartney McAlphabet (which we start recording tomorrow) is proving to be a pleasant distraction from the norm. Artwork for the podcast, using a picture I took myself, no less (back when Paul didn't have a face). It helps that it's a subject I've engrossed myself in for a good thirty years, so I'd like to think finding something to talk about shouldn't be too much of a stretch. That said, I'm still slightly worried that I haven't done enough homework. The fact two of us are doing it inevitably brings on a form of "Are we doing Christmas presents this year?"-style panic. What if she's done reams of nuanced research and all I've got is a post-it note with "He plays bass" written on it? I think it's something we need to start to find out what needs doing. Most importantly it should be fun. Just the thought of a new project is exciting. I haven't looked...

Today, Neil Innes told me off for writing a song so catchy it stuck in his head, which was a compliment I'm delighted to take on board. Posing with Neil Innes after tonight's Hitchin Mostly Comedy (03.10.19) He said it to me just after Glyn and I finished soundchecking Ukulele Girl for the evening's show; something I felt very conscious he was watching at the back. Being nonchalant about it was never going to be easy - this was someone who'd worked with Paul McCartney and George Harrison, after all - but I did my best to act like he was the sort of audience I put up with every day. He turned out to be lovely, which is always a bonus when you meet someone with his pedigree whose work you highly rate. I suspected I'd at least be able to talk to him quite freely about the work of him and his contemporaries, but it was nice that he was happy to discuss them, and was just generally a good sport. It goes to show how the biggest and best people we have at the c...

To mark Earth Hour tonight, my wife and I turned everything off (with the exception of the fridge) and settled down for a quiz-by-candlelight, with The Beatles Bitesize edition of Trivial Pursuit as our question-master. Anyone who knows me reasonably well will know my grasp of Beatles trivia is pretty comprehensive, although there's knowing stuff and then there's knowing stuff so, while I scored a more-than-acceptable twenty-one, my wife wound up with a fairly impressive twelve, proving that hanging around with me for fourteen years has some benefits. Finally, being with me makes sense: you can be quids-in on Fab Four facts; after all, what could be more useful in a crisis than knowing where The Beatles filmed the beginning of Let it Be (A.K.A. Twickenham Film Studios)?; it seems all the years spent learning this shit paid off.

I don't want to live in a world where 363 chose to give a YouTube video of the song 'You Never Give Me Your Money' a thumbs down. In all the years I've known this song, I've never grown tired of it. It's perhaps the first instance of a Macca mini-suite in the style of 'Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey' or 'Band on the Run', and is easily more affecting, going from the mournfulness of the first verse to the playfulness of that student-like bridge, to the sound of freedom in the last few verses. It also sparkles with beautiful clarity, from the clean ring of those opening piano chords to the crackling lead guitar fills; it's truly wonderful and a great example of why The Beatles were the best. One of the most remarkable things about the band was the rate at which they matured and grew, and this song's a perfect case in point when you compare it to what came a couple of years before it; this is not the same band that produced 'From Me...

While I’m generally rather enamoured with Paul McCartney’s critically acclaimed new album Egypt Station (which is really very good) a song on it that touches me particularly and is an emotional listen is the beautiful Do it Now. What's struck me particularly about the album is the high level of songwriting on display across the board, and Do it Now’s one of the places when it’s most in evidence. Macca has mentioned in interviews how the title stems from a phrase his dad used to say as a positive encouragement, which instantly calls to mind the story about the genesis of the song Let it Be, when Paul had a dream in the midst of the Beatles' break-up where his mother (who he lost to cancer during his childhood) came to him and told him not to worry as everything would ultimately be okay. In many ways, Do it Now is like a companion piece to its hugely famous counterpart, but it still packs a punch. Some of the lyrics are particularly powerful ...

There’s something about the simplicity of this song that I can’t get enough of. Macca’s first solo album is famed for its primitive sound and production, which came about as a result of it being mostly recorded at home with a very basic set-up. There's an honesty and directness that's striking compared to the intricately produced Abbey Road (or the over-the-top Let it Be). While there are still big moments - Maybe I’m Amazed is the most obvious - it’s the intimacy that comes across the most, of the kind McCartney didn’t revisit so consistently until 1997’s Flaming Pie or 2005’s Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, a good twenty-seven / thirty-five years later. While Paul’s debut album got a tough press when it was released, which wasn't helped by the recent breakup of The Beatles and the subsequent sniping from John, George and Ringo, it’s a far more solid affair than you'd imagine when listened to in retrospect; yes, some of it'...

Whenever I put together a show, the music I choose to use - both in and around it - has always been very important to me. The songs I settle on are never there by accident, as they’re an essential way of contributing to the feel of the show as a whole. Admittedly, I’ll often go for something by The Beatles or Paul McCartney as their music is something I’m very passionate about, but invariably I’ll pick something obscure I suspect the wider public won’t be aware of, but I think they'll like. 'Hey Bulldog' is a perfect case in point. The song was only cut by The Beatles as something to do while shooting a video for the single ‘Lady Madonna’ in the studio, and was if anything a bit of a toss-off, but despite this it has long been a personal favourite; consequently, it’s been the play-out at every single Mostly Comedy that’s ever been. It doesn’t matter how many times I hear the song in that context, it still has the same impact. I love the...

Over the past few weeks I’ve been indulging my fangirl obsession for a certain musician’s back catalogue by dipping into ‘ Take it Away: The Complete Paul McCartney Archive Podcast’ . The subject matter is as self-explanatory as it is ambitious: the hosts Ryan Brady and Chris Mercer set out to discuss all of Macca’s post-Beatles work, from his 1970 solo album McCartney through to the present day - with an episode per album - while also taking into account as much of his unreleased material as they can lay their hands on along the way. Listening to them cover a topic I’m so familiar with is like comfort food for the soul (to use a clunky image). It’s the sort of thing I would have loved to have been part of myself, if there’d been someone around to do it with; curse the massive distance between the podcast’s hosts and me. And even I've learnt stuff I didn’t know about my most revisited subject, and heard snippets of demos I was unfamiliar with t...

Listening to the final part of 'Paul Merton’s Beatles' today in the midst of the UK's current heatwave brought to mind one of my favourite renditions of a Buddy Holly song, Wings’ ‘Love is Strange’. Well…all right (to quote another Holly record): it isn’t technically a Buddy song so much as a track that’s often connected with him because he covered it too, but it’s fair to say neither the original by Fifties R&B act Micky & Sylvia, nor Buddy’s version instantly lend themselves to be reinterpreted with a loose reggae groove, but that’s the route Macca chose to take with excellent results. In my opinion it’s by far the most enjoyable performance on Wings’ much maligned first LP - and while that’s fairly shallow praise, it is by no means meant to be taken as such; it’s just about as summery a recording as you can get. It’s fair to say that Paul had a bit of a soft spot for reggae in the early Seventies, something Wings' 1972 s...

Today is Paul McCartney’s 75 th birthday; a fact which seems to have slipped below the radar despite the furore over the fiftieth anniversary of Sgt Pepper of late. Sadly, his constant presence at high-profile events in recent years seems to have resulted in a dip in popularity (and an increase in cynicism) particularly in the UK. He still sells concert tickets by the bucket-load, but there’s a sense this is purely because he’s the only living Beatle who co-wrote the lion's share of their material - which he trades on heavily live - but perhaps that’s where the interest in his work should end. As someone with huge respect for him as an artist, this makes me very sad. Only today, I stumbled across an internet poll that deemed him the third-best Beatle; the man who wrote Eleanor Rigby, Yesterday, Let it Be, Hey Jude, Blackbird, She’s Leaving Home, Here There and Everywhere, Helter Skelter, Golden Slumbers and You Never Give Me Your Money to name just a sizeable few; for...

One thing I like Paul McCartney for is his b-sides and his lesser-known work. Sadly, a clichéd view of his solo material has formed over the years that does no justice to his huge back catalogue. At best, people tend to rate Wings 1973 album Band on the Run as a near-return to form of his unparalleled Beatles period, but after that, critique tends to fall silent, save the easy - and unreasonable - allusions to twee granny musak made by Lennon during the bitter early Seventies. In reality, the last twenty years have seen a surprising array of top-quality albums that are regularly described as “his best work since Band on the Run”, whilst forgetting this same comment has been applied to nearly every release since 1997’s Flaming Pie. It’s normally his choice of singles that cloud the water, by not always being reflective of his current output. While there are many songs I’d site as favourites, one popped in my mind that’s worth a mention: the ...

With the fiftieth anniversary of The Beatles' Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band approaching, it’s worth noting that an Ephgrave painted the drumskin on the cover, either making me fictional or my family a whistle-blower for Paul McCartney’s apparent death. Black Pepper. You may not be aware of the Paul is Dead craze, which swept America primarily (no surprise there) in the late Sixties. If you’re not, the best way to summarise would be to say a group of stoned cretins began to spot supposed clues on The Beatles’ records and their artwork to suggest that McCartney had been killed in a motorcycle accident in 1966 and replaced by a look-alike, to literally save face. This was nonsense of course, yet the theory still managed to gain considerable momentum, which still hasn’t slowed to this day in the more overly-imaginative corners of the internet.  Exhibit A. The first LP to supposedly be littered with clues was Sgt Pepper, with the majo...

Tonight, for the third Friday running, I went to London's Prince Charles Cinema on Leicester Square for one of their "beer and pizza" screenings; this week's film was the subtle mockumentary classic 'This is Spinal Tap' (I'd include the umlaut above the N, if my phone would let me.) Spinal Tap, like Withnail and I, is infamous amongst the touring actor / musician scene. I'd heard most of the quotable lines long before I'd actually seen it. I can remember my long lost actor friend Richard Doubleday, who I haven't seen in ages, schooling me in how to look up at the flies in disdain as the tiny sign reading 'Rock 'n' Roll Heaven' flew in at the end of the show of the same name ,which was my professional debut, in tribute to the Stonehenge sequence. It was unprofessional, but if we hadn't done it, it would have been an opportunity missed.  It's a strange film to see amongst an audience, as the dialogue's so subtle and...

Tonight, I did a short spot at the open mic night Big Nose Comedy in Kilburn – and it’s fair to say that the stars aligned for me in both a negative and positive way, as the sad passing of George Martin this week resulted in it being a Beatles-themed gig; a subject that’s right up my street; my zebra-crossinged-in-1969 street. (I’m referring to Abbey Road.) I was second on in the first half, which was nice, as it meant I could relax fairly early on in the evening, rather than spending the whole night trying to keeping my brain in gear. For some reason, I was very nervous just before I went on, to the point of having the shakes. I made sure I psychologically knocked these jitters on the metaphorical head with a mantra the Maharishi would have been proud of: “David, you’ve played bigger rooms than this. David, you’ve played bigger rooms than this”. I’ve performed at the Liverpool Empire as a fucking Beatle , damn it, so I can riff a bit about them fo...

I’m dog-and-cat-sitting for my mum this evening.   It’s nice to have a quiet night in with the animals and ‘the wife’ (in that order), in a proper house, like a proper adult and everything. In some ways it’s unnerving, as my mum’s pets are massively out-sized compared to my cat and two budgies at home. Her retriever Barley could make a solid case for dwarfing Digby, while her cat Chaser is just too lengthy for his own good; he’s the feline Ford Cadillac to my cat Millie's Smart car model. I’m enjoying the time away from work, having spent the afternoon holed up in the office, planning a set for a short spot I’m doing in London tomorrow. I feel my time there was wasted as, instead of running material that’s likely to end up in my show – which was the reason I took the gig in the first place – I found myself vaguely working up something to fit the theme for tomorrow’s gig, which appropriately for me, is ‘The Beatles’. In reality, I could have just stuck in a gag or...

I was very sad to hear of the passing of Phil Everly this morning. The Everly Brothers pretty much originated close harmony singing in popular music; without them, there would have been no Beatles, no Beach Boys and no Simon & Garfunkel. Their music was beautifully constructed, with voices that blended so perfectly that if it wasn’t for the musical interval between them, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were one. They were contemporaries of Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison, touring extensively with them both. Their influence on each other was huge: just listen to Buddy’s ‘Listen to Me’ and ‘Words of Love’, for example; you could easily mistake it for the Everlys. It was a time of cross-promoting between artists, with both Buddy and Roy actively writing for the duo. Phil and Don also supplied the distinctive “Dum, dum, dum, dum-me-doo-wah” that helped make Orbison’s ‘Only The Lonely’ such a big hit.  The two brothers and Buddy were exceptionally close. Phil was eve...

This morning I increased the planet’s life expectancy by a few minutes, by taking out four boxes-worth of recycling.  (There’s no need to thank me.) There were no collection points within walking distance of my house until recently - which, as a non-driver, made recycling very inconvenient. The length of time I'd stockpile cardboard made me worry I was doing more bad for the environment than good. Now we have a full range of green, brown and purple bins mere yards from my back door, allowing me to recycle as often as I like – feeling every bit of a small-scale hero in the process. Despite it being so convenient, I still have a habit of letting my waste build up (a horrific mental image) – and as I took my third or fourth box-full out this morning, I had a sudden flashback to the first song I wrote, while I was still at junior school. I was ten years old and already in my first band. We were called Thunder & Lightning (a ...