REVIEW: John, Paul, George, Ringo... and Bert - Original London Cast
Given how many records Barbara Dickson has sold over her career, it’s surprising – perhaps – that the cast recording of John, Paul, George, Ringo… and Bert, the Beatles jukebox musical that first put her in the public eye, has remained out of print for so long. The show, which premiered at the Liverpool Everyman in 1974, was Willy Russell’s first great success as a playwright; rather than force actors to imitate the Beatles, Russell placed the songs as a kind of counterpoint to the scenes in his retelling of the group’s rise to stardom, performed from the side of the stage by Dickson at the piano accompanied by a small band. The show was a moderate West End hit in 1974-75; while the cast recording was issued on LP and cassette, however, it had never been released on CD.That, thankfully, has finally been rectified. Several tantalizing numbers have long been available for (temporary) consumption via Dickson’s remarkably comprehensive YouTube page, but it’s taken until this year for the complete album to be made available on CD (it still doesn’t appear to be available as a download).
The bad news, unfortunately, is that while the album has apparently been digitally remastered (at least, according to the rear cover) the sound quality in places is still less than exemplary. It’s not exactly bad, but the recording was made in 1974 on (I would guess) a relatively small budget, and it (still) sounds it. And while Alan Clyde’s long essay about the show’s genesis is welcome and informative, it’s printed in a tiny font against a lurid colored background (brightly tinted photographs of the Beatles and Ms. Dickson) that makes it difficult to read.
Happily, there’s not much else to criticize. Dickson's distinctive mournful/sunny voice suits these songs very well indeed. She has always been a superlative interpreter of song lyrics, and she is in sensational form here, taking a set of very familiar songs and making them – all of them – seem absolutely fresh. ‘Here Comes The Sun’, here, is introduced with a stunning, stark rendition of the first verse of the traditional Christmas carol ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’; it’s an unexpected combination, and it works beautifully. Elsewhere, the highlights are a simple, aching ‘Long and Winding Road’, a dazzling ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, and (especially) a jubilant ‘We Can Work It Out’ – the latter, in particular, is still probably as exciting a performance as Dickson has ever recorded. The band (for the album, larger than the three-piece combo used in the theatre) sounds great; the sound is more 70s than 60s, but the point was to sound different from the original Beatles recordings and these songs have seldom been served as well as they are here.
It’s not quite a Barbara Dickson solo album – or, for that matter, a Beatles recital. Two songs – ‘Ooee Boppa’ and ‘I Will Be Your Love’ – are written by Russell himself, and performed by other members of the show’s cast. The songs are entertaining-enough pastiches of 60s pop, and it says a great deal for Russell as a songwriter that ‘Ooee Boppa’, a parody of the kind of spoken-word-narrative teen pop made by groups like the Shangri-Las, sits reasonably comfortably next to Dickson’s glorious performance of ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’. They’re performed with great enthusiasm by, respectively, Luan Peters and George Costigan, and they’re nice to have, but Dickson is the main event here. If you’ve enjoyed her work elsewhere, this is an essential purchase.
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