Derek Taylor: More Degs and Jack.

From the pages of Cheetah magazine, January 1968. Degs is held in high regard round these parts, and it's always great to see some "new" Fabs-related verbiage from him; so, a couple of pages and a long lost night from the first US tour, scanned by Richard Morton Jack of most excellent Flashback/Galactic Ramble fame, and all thanks to him for so doing. D & z, friends, d & z.

24 Chapel Street: Sgt Pepper shindig.

19th May, 1967: 24 Chapel Street. The evening party for Pepper chez Eppy was a two-part affair - first, assorted photographers were given some time to do their respective thang as ver Fabs posed with and without a handy copy of the new album. After a bit, the snappers were ushered out (pausing to take a few shots by the front door), and the Beatles returned to eat, drink and chat with various journalists.
To wit, Ray Coleman's contemporary piece, bits of which I've seen quoted before, but not the whole caboodle. Ray felt that John was out of it, and yer know wot? He might just have been right.
Download and zoom in to read:

Brian was, in fact, mid-way through a stay at the Priory, attempting once again to dry out, but made it to the party all the same. Other contemporary reports have him leaving early in order to head down to Kingsley Hill (see posts passim), but in fact it was back to the clinic. However, his famous eye for detail was clearly still intact; the story goes that he had 100 1oz solid silver coins cast to hand out at the party, and also to give to Nems employees and other favoured folk. One of these was found amongst his personal effects in the immediate interval post mortem:

George too left early - some scribbler pissed him off. Grumpy.

321 West 44th St NYC: Record Plant East, 1974.

¿Qué pasaba New York? In the good old 1970s, the Record Plant East at 321 West 44th Street was what was happening; it was John's studio of choice for much of his solo career. When the weather was clement, up on the roof he'd scoot, and so these splendid (and little seen)(by me at any rate) pics came to pass.
The studio itself is long gone, of course, but the building remains, having been recently recast as an office complex (and thus affording the opportunity for a spot of "then unt nau").
In the 40 years since etc, Midtown has become ever richer, with the "3-R's" (re-development, re-re-development and re-re-ohshutupimmediately) much in evidence - note the Uris Building (now the Paramount Plaza) looming in 1974, a little dwarfed cum 2014 (if you'll excuse the expression)(also note the also re-developed roof):

Another angle...:

...this time with the huge Milford Hotel as a backdrop; again, here's almost the exact same spot 40 years on:

Tammy's ever excellent blog featured the colour variant a while back, but I hadn't seen the black and white one before:

Likewise with these; the right hand John was on Tammy (as it were), but etc.:

Of course, the Record Plant East was also John's final studio - he overdubbed guitar for Yoko's Walking On Thin Ice here on the evening of December 8th, 1980.

Kenwood: December 2nd, 1968.

The Hard Rock Cafe has (or should that be have?) put up the complete unedited tapes of the December 2nd 1968 interview done at Kenwood, together with a fascinating audio reminiscence by Maurice Hindle (the interviewer) in which he recalls in detail the circumstances of his meeting with John at the titular abode, together with transcripts and a couple of explanatory essays.

Lovely stuff indeed. Go HERE to gerrit.