John and Yoko Ono flew to Denmark today.

During his stay in Denmark, Lennon decided to withdraw his support for the International Peace Festival, announced to be held in Canada in 1970 but which never took place, unless the promoters agreed to waive an entrance fee.

The #1 song in the US on December 28, 1967
Hello, Goodbye - The Beatles

The #1 song on the UK Singles Chart on December 27, 1964

I Feel Fine - The Beatles

Merry Christmas!

Today on Christmas Eve, John and Yoko arrived back in England from Canada, where they had launched their global peace campaign. Part of the campaign was to have been a Christmas Eve antiwar demonstration due to take place in various countries, for which the couple had tape-recorded a greeting to be played.

Upon their arrival back in the UK, they were driven to Rochester Cathedral in Kent, where they intended to join a fast and sit-in calling for peace and to highlight world poverty. They arrived, accompanied by comedian Dick Gregory, in a white Rolls-Royce.

They were due to take part in a 24-hour sleepover with the homeless of Kent. However, a small crowd was already present when they arrived, and it was felt likely that their continued presence would have caused a commotion.

Lennon, Ono and Gregory posed for press photographers, and briefly went inside the cathedral but soon returned to their limousine to avoid being mobbed. They later attended midnight mass in the cathedral before returning to Tittenhurst Park in Ascot, Berkshire.

Today, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1969 peace campaign came to a close following a meeting with Canada’s prime minister Pierre Trudeau which took place in the Centre Block on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Lennon and Ono had arrived in the city at 2am that morning, having traveled from Toronto via Montreal.

They arrived at the Parliament Building at 11am, with a scrum of photographers ready to snap the moment they met the Canadian PM. It was the only time Lennon and Ono were able to take their peace campaign directly to a world leader.

The meeting lasted for 51 minutes behind closed doors, although news cameras were on hand before and after. When they emerged, a reporter asked Lennon and Ono what had taken them so long. Ono replied that it was because they had all been enjoying the conversation.

Lennon added: “We spent about 50 minutes together, which was longer than he had spent with any head of state. If all politicians were like Mr Trudeau there would be world peace.”

Today John Lennon and Yoko Ono travelled to Ottawa, stopping briefly in Montreal during their Peace campaign.  They gave a press conference to local journalists at Montreal’s Château Champlain hotel.

Both Lennon and Ono dressed in black and were surrounded by War Is Over posters. A brief colour clip from the conference was later included in the 1988 documentary Imagine: John Lennon.

Today was the final Beatles-related studio booking in 1969. It was a mixing and editing session for the unreleased Get Back album. None of The Beatles attended.

It lasted two hours, from 2-4pm, and was a continuation of Glyn Johns’ work-in-progress on the LP. It is not known which songs were worked on.

Johns had been asked by The Beatles to compile the album, which was to more closely follow the songs in the film than his previous effort had. His first session for this part of the project had taken place on 15 December.

Following their encounter with Marshall McLuhan at the University of Toronto, John Lennon and Yoko Ono gave an interview to CBC-TV’s news and current affairs show CBC Weekend.

Lennon introduced the show, hosted by Lloyd Robertson, as “Peace Weekend”. The other guest was Rabbi Abhraham Feinberg, who had previously sang in the chorus on Give Peace A Chance.

CBC Weekend went out live from 10.15-11.15pm. The interview took place at the CBC Studio in Toronto.

The segment featuring Lennon began with legislator Russell Doern, via a linkup from Winnipeg, reading a letter from Manitoba’s premier asking whether Lennon and Ono would visit in the new year to promote peace. Lennon described the offer as “beautiful” and said he would definitely visit for the province’s 100th anniversary year, although he never did.

Lennon went on to explain why he chose Canada for this peace campaign. “I don’t want to be Mr and Mrs Dead Saint of 1970,” he said.

Rabbi Feinberg was asked if the campaign was a waste of effort, but said it was worthwhile as “it’s intended to leap over the politicians and reach the people.”

The Beatles’ Seventh Christmas Record: Happy Christmas 1969

The final Beatles Christmas offering was also recorded separately, as the band had effectively split by this point. It features an extensive visit with John and Yoko at their Tittenhurst Park estate, where they play “what will Santa bring me?” games. Harrison only appears briefly, and Starr only shows up to plug his recent film, The Magic Christian. Paul sings his original ad-lib, This is to Wish You a Merry, Merry Christmas. Starting at 1:30, at the tail-end of Ringo’s song, the guitar solos from The End are heard, followed by Yoko interviewing John.

In December 1970, in the wake of the band’s break-up, the UK fan-club sent out a compilation LP of all seven recordings, entitled From Then To You. The master tapes having been mislaid, the LP was mastered from copies of the original flexi discs. In the US, the LP was repackaged as The Beatles’ Christmas Album and sent out by the fan-club around springtime 1971. With no new recording, the LP served to remind that the Beatles were no more, but had the advantage of durability over the original flexi discs, and, for the US, it was the first time the 1964 and 1965 messages had been made available.

Today John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded a message to be broadcast on Japanese radio. The recording took place at the home of musician Ronnie Hawkins in Ontario. It began with a few words in Japanese, before a version of Give Peace A Chance. Lasting about a minute, it ends with Lennon repeatedly bantering “moshi moshi” in mock Japanese. Much of the remainder of the 10-minute recording is of Ono speaking in Japanese, with Lennon in the background playing an acoustic guitar.

You could hear versions of Sun King, Dear Prudence and Make Love Not War, which later became Mind Games.

Ono speaks of her plans for the peace movement and accompanying music festival. She mentions her recent holidays with Lennon in India and Italy, and says she would like to return to Japan in 1970.

Today John Lennon gave an interview to New York City’s WABC-AM radio. John and Yoko had given a great many interviews in recent weeks, and this touched upon many of the familiar themes: the peace campaign, the future of The Beatles, the Hanratty case, the return of Lennon’s MBE and the concept of Bagism.

Other details that emerged during the interview included: the stage for the proposed peace festival in 1970 would be a giant bed; a single person had been employed to preview the ‘War is over’ slogan on a sandwich board in New York before the campaign began; George Harrison and Ringo Starr had both briefly left The Beatles; the odds of the group ever touring again were 90-1.

Other information included a 10-day rice-only diet in Greece that had ended with a curry and milkshake in Bombay, India. Lennon described it as “like having every drug I’ve ever touched”. He said he and Ono planned to attend the Midem festival in Cannes in January 1970 as representatives of Apple.

Lennon also mentioned that he had a fake fur coat made out of human hair, which resembled “hundreds of Yoko’s heads”. Asked by Smith what music he was listening to, Lennon mentioned recent releases by Johnny Winer and Lee Dorsey.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono flew to Toronto, Canada to begin the next stage of the couple’s peace campaign. They stayed on Ronnie Hawkins’ ranch in Mississauga, Ontario, from where they gave a series of interviews to the world’s media.

The Canadian campaign coincided with the erection of a series of advertisements in 12 cities worldwide proclaiming “War is over! If you want it. Happy Christmas from John & Yoko”. In Toronto, 30 roadside billboards were set up, as well as thousands of posters and handbills.

Lennon and Ono publicly claimed their hopes that the trip would herald the beginning of “Year One AP (After Peace)”. However, although they were given considerable publicity during their stay, which ended on 23 December, it marked the end of their protest activities for two years.

The Plastic Ono Band took part in a benefit concert on this day for the charity Unicef, at the Lyceum Ballroom in central London.

In November 1969 Unicef had announced that the group would perform at the event. This, however, was news to John Lennon and Yoko Ono, although they agreed to take part after recognising it would be a useful opportunity to highlight their peace and political campaigning.

The event was titled Peace For Christmas. Also appearing were several other acts: the Young Rascals, Desmond Dekker and the Aces, Blue Mink and Black Velvet, and Emperor Rosko was the disc jockey between the performances.

With just 48 hours’ notice, the other members of the Plastic Ono Band’s first show at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival also agreed to play: Eric Clapton on guitar, Klaus Voormann on bass, and Alan White on drums, plus Billy Preston on keyboards.

On the night, however, Clapton arrived with almost all of Delaney & Bonnie’s touring band, which at the time included George Harrison. This, therefore, was the first time Lennon and Harrison had performed at a scheduled concert since The Beatles’ last show on 29 August 1966. It was also the Plastic Ono Band’s only European concert.

I thought it was fantastic. I was really into it. We were doing the show and George and Bonnie and Delaney, Billy Preston and all that crowd turned up. They’d just come back from Sweden and George had been playing invisible man in Bonnie and Delaney’s band, which Eric Clapton had been doing, to get the pressure off being the famous Eric and the famous George. They became the guitarists in this and they all turned up, and it was again like the concert in Toronto. I said, ‘Will you come on?’ They said, ‘Well, what are you going to play?’ I said, ‘Listen, we’re going to do probably a blues… or Cold Turkey, which is three chords, and Eric knew that.’ And Don’t Worry Kyoko, which was Yoko’s, which has three chords and a riff. I said, ‘Once we get on to Yoko’s riff, just keep hitting it.’

Today a television tribute to George Martin, With A Little Help From My Friends, was filmed.

Ringo Starr was among the guests taking part in the televisual spectacular, which also featured Dudley Moore, The Hollies, Blue Mink, Lulu, Spike Milligan and dancers Pan’s People, plus Martin himself conducting the 40-piece George Martin Orchestra.

With A Little Help From My Friends was filmed in Studio Four at The Television Centre in Leeds. Starr’s contribution was to mime to Octopus’s Garden. Because of a Musicians’ Union ban on lip-syncing on British television, however, parts of the song had been re-recorded on December 8th to give the impression of a live performance.

In December 1969, John Lennon gave an exclusive interview to Alan Smith that would be published in the December 13th issue of the New Musical Express. The article would be entitled 'Beatles are on the Brink of Splitting' and features intriguing insights into John Lennon's early thoughts about what is troubling the group.

John cites several factors on the band's disharmony that he feels could potentially lead to a Beatles breakup, including differences of opinion on how to run Apple between himself and Paul, as well as George Harrison's budding songwriting talents making future Beatles releases less interesting to the Lennon/McCartney songwriting partnership. John says "I don’t want to spend six months making an album I have two tracks on. And neither do Paul or George probably."

He goes on to say that the Beatles future "...depends how much we all want to record together. I go off and on it. I really do."

Lennon also describes what he terms as the "freeloading" at Apple and says it needs to stop.

John gets in a plug for the release of his solo album, "Live Peace In Toronto" which had been released one day earlier on December 12th.

The breakup of the Beatles would be officially announced four months later, in April of 1970.

I MAY be wrong, and I hope I am, but these are dark days for the Beatles. I begin to wonder how much longer their association can stand the strain of their own individual talent.

John Lennon pulls toward peace and his own Plastic Ono Band; Ringo pulls toward a bigger and better film career; George Harrison jumps toward his own prolific songwriting; and Paul McCartney pulls himself away to Scotland, his own songs… and silence.

Certainly, John and Paul are on opposite sides of a heavy wall of difference and self-inflicted gloom. And the bond between them can hardly have been more weak, or their opposing interests more strong.

A few days ago, John and Yoko and I in a one-hour and fifteen minute exclusive interview for NME, (partly filmed for BBC-1’s look at the world of John and Yoko Lennon in “24 Hours”), and during that time he gave me frank answers to his mental rifts with Paul and the current state of the Beatles.

He was pleasant, together, straightforward, mellow and resolute, and only in references to Paul did his voice drop in doubt.

He told me “Paul and I have differences of opinion on how things should be run. But instead of it being a private argument about how an LP should be done, or a certain track, it’s now a larger argument about the organization of Apple itself.”

“Whether we both want the same thing from Apple in the end is a matter of opinion. But how to achieve it -- that’s where we digress.

“Mainly we disagree on the Klein bit. But you know, I don’t really want to discuss Paul without him here. It’s just that as far as I can see, Paul was always waiting for this guy to just appear and save us from the mess we were in.

“And we were in a mess, and only my saying it in the press that time enabled Klein to hear about it and come over.

“I’m a quarter of this building, and it became a question of whether I should pull my money out if I could – which I probably can’t.

“I did say I wanted out at one time. It was just that all my income was going into Apple and being wasted by the joy-riding people who were here. In fact, that was just the minute bit of it. I just wanted it to stop.

“It’s no use pretending we can be here all the time when that kind of thing is going on. We needed a business man. No Beatle can spend his days here checking the accountants.

“There was also the question of the four of us holding different opinions on things, and the staff not knowing where they were or who to listen to.

“I know that’s what’s going on all the time. People come to me and say ‘Paul wants this done. What do you think?’ and they know damn well what I think, and they say ‘Alright,’ and then they go to Paul and say ‘John wants this done. He’s off again.’

“The result is that we kept sending in different instructions and nothing was being done. Like people anywhere, they were getting away with what they could. We were naïve and stupid.

“What I would like is for the freeloading to stop but the old Apple spirit to remain. The spirit will be there, because if Apple is not a problem to the Beatles – which it was – it just can’t help but get better.

“Our job is to put the creative side into Apple. If the Beatles never recorded together again, but each put their creative efforts through Apple… that at least would be better than me having a company, Paul having a company, George having a company, and Ringo having a company. Together we at least have that much more power.

“I know now that the original concept of helping everybody doesn’t work in its purest form. All you get are the bums and freeloaders everybody else turns down.

“The only way we can help other artists at Apple is the same way the Beatles helped other artists… by breaking new barriers. That’s what we didn’t get before. We sat back, and we started to believe our own publicity, to tell ourselves how the Beatles helped people get long hair, and the Beatles started off this, and the other.

“The Beatles split up? It just depends how much we all want to record together. I don’t know if I want to record together again. I go off and on it. I really do.

“The problem is that in the old days, when we needed an album, Paul and I got together and produced enough songs for it. Nowadays there’s three if us writing prolifically and trying to fit it all onto one album. Or we have to think of a double album every time, which takes six months.

“That’s the hang-up we have. It’s not a personal ‘The Beatles are fighting’ thing, so much as an actual physical problem. What do you do? I don’t want to spend six months making an album I have two tracks on. And neither do Paul or George probably. That’s the problem. If we can overcome that, maybe it’ll sort itself out.

“None of us want to be background musicians most of the time. It’s a waste. We didn’t spend ten years ‘making it’ to have the freedom in the recording studios, to be able to have two tracks on an album.

“It’s not like we spend our time wrestling in the studio trying to get our own songs on. We all do it the same way… we take it in turns to record a track. It’s just that usually in the past, George lost out because Paul and I are tougher.

“It’s nothing new, the way things are. It’s human. We’ve always said we’ve had fights. It’s no news that we argue. I’m more interested in my songs. Paul’s more interested in his, and George is more interested in his. That’s always been.

“This is why I’ve started with the Plastic Ono and working with Yoko… to have more outlet. There isn’t enough outlet for me in the Beatles. The Ono Band is my escape valve. And how important that gets, as compared to the Beatles for me, I’ll have to wait and see.

“You have to realize that there’s a peculiar situation, in that if ‘Cold Turkey’ had the name Beatles on it, probably it would have been a No. 1.

“ ‘Cold Turkey’ has got Ringo and me on it, and yet on half the Beatles’ tracks of ‘Abbey Road,’ I’m not on, or half the tracks on the double album – and even way back. Sometimes there might be only two Beatles on a track. It’s got to the situation where if we have the name ‘Beatle’ on it, it sells. So you get to think: ‘What are we selling? Do they buy it because it’s worth it, or just because it says ‘Beatles’?

“George is in the same position. I mean, he’s got songs he’s been trying to get on since 1930. He’s got to make an album of his own. And maybe if he puts ‘Beatles’ on the label rather than George Harrison, it might sell more. That’s the drag.

“Of course we could each make an album and call it ‘The Beatles,’ but that would be cheating. And that’s not my scene.

“Anyway, folks, remember the Plastic Ono Band LP from Toronto released December the 13th, with a nice picture of the sky, and a fab calendar inside of a year’s events with John and Yoko, with poetry and fun.”

NEXT WEEK: “DO I WANT TO BE HATED”; MISCARRIAGE; THE ‘GET BACK’ FILM; STAGE FRIGHT; AUNT MIMI; FEAR; INSECURITY; JEALOUSY; POLITICIANS – AND PEACE.

The Magic Christian, Ringo Starr's second film made its world première on this evening at the Odeon Theatre in Kensington, London.

The event was attended by Starr and his wife Maureen, as well as John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Also present was Princess Margaret.

Lennon and Ono both were black capes, and before the film held banners in the foyer proclaiming “BRITAIN MURDERED HANRATTY”.
The Magic Christian, which also starred Peter Sellers, had its US première in Los Angeles on 29 January 1970. There was also a New York première on 11 February that year.

George Harrison had joined a number of dates of the English tour by husband and wife act Delaney & Bonnie. On this date the tour moved on to Copenhagen in Denmark, and Harrison again appeared as part of the band.

Delaney & Bonnie performed for three consecutive nights at the Falkoner Theatre in the Danish capital, and Harrison was there for each. They were the last tour dates he joined them for.

The Beatles had opened their world tour at another Copenhagen venue on 4 June 1964, with Jimmie Nicol standing in for an unwell Ringo Starr.

Nothing happened today

Ringo made an appearance on a television special celebrating George Martin. It was the last Beatles-related recording session of 1969.

The show, With A Little Help From My Friends, featured a number of artists that had worked with Martin.

Because of Musicians’ Union rules on miming, it was necessary to re-record parts of Octopus’s Garden, which Starr had agreed to mime to in the show. The union had established a ban on lip-syncing on British television, but by re-recording parts of the song in the studio it was possible to make the appearance that the song was a live performance.

Because the Beatles would not agree to reconvene in the studio, Starr attended alongside three session musicians. A mix of Octopus’s Garden excluding all but drums, rhythm guitar, backing vocals and bubble effects had been made by George Martin on 2 December, and during this session new overdubs were added.

The overdubs were recorded while a copy of the 2 December mix was made. It took 10 attempts to get right, and featured new vocals, piano, lead guitar and bass guitar. The names of the session musicians are not known.

George Harrison was performing on the final night of the UK tour of husband and wife team from the US, Delaney & Bonnie. George was there for five of the tour’s six dates, playing two shows each night. He appeared in Bristol, Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool and Croydon. He didn’t perform at the Newcastle shows on December 5th, due to his mother being ill.

Several of the shows were also recorded for possible album release – the result was 1970’s Delaney & Bonnie & Friends On Tour With Eric Clapton. Harrison was credited as “Mysterioso”.

Harrison had previously performed at Croydon’s Fairfield Hall with The Beatles on September 7, 1963.

Ringo Starr and Peter Sellers made a joint appearance on the Frost On Sunday television show on this day for the promotion of their film The Magic Christian.

The show was broadcast later that night, from 11.10pm-midnight, on London Weekend Television. It was filmed in colour in Studio One at Wembley Studios in London. Also appearing on the show was Sellers' fellow Goon Show member Spike Milligan, who also appeared in the film.

The clip begins with Sellers explaining the subject and background of the film. Milligan's scene is then shown, after which he joins Starr and Sellers. A series of silly voices, character parts and visual gags inevitably follows, leaving Frost struggling to get a word in.

Likewise, Starr is effectively sidelined, although he and Sellers do sing a brief version of Octopus's Garden. Another clip is then shown, of the Sotheby's auction scene featuring John Cleese.

The clip survives in audio only; no version with visuals is known to exist.

More sessions after the split......

After the first session on December 2nd, this was the second day of stereo mixing for the US compilation Hey Jude.

It took place from 2.30-5.15pm, and began with two mixes of Hey Jude. Although the song had previously been mixed in stereo, it was evidently felt that these were unsuited to the US market.

Revolution, which had been the b-side of the Hey Jude single in 1968, had never previously been mixed in stereo. It took just one attempt to achieve a satisfactory mix on this day. 

Meanwhile, while George and Ringo are doing their own thing, the third day of a five-day shoot for the BBC documentary 24 Hours: The World Of John And Yoko began at Tittenhurst Park before moving on to the Apple headquarters in Savile Row, London.

On this day filming began with John Lennon eating in bed and making a telephone call to arrange a visit to Toronto, Canada, where he intended to sign his Bag One lithographs. An exhibition was being planned, although it never took place. The 35-minute documentary was first shown from 10.30pm on BBC 1 on 15 December, and extracts were also used in the 1988 documentary Imagine: John Lennon.

Lennon and Yoko Ono were also filmed viewing a print of The Beatles performing Some Other Guy in October 1962, which had been chosen for inclusion in the ATV programme Man Of The Decade.

In the afternoon the Plastic Ono Band held a recording session at EMI Studios, Abbey Road. This was also filmed, and some of the footage was included in the 24 Hours documentary.

Later, at Apple, Lennon and Ono are captured signing documents and giving interviews, one of which was with Alan Smith of the New Musical Express. The couple also gave an interview to Japanese radio, for which they offered to donate a selection of Plastic Ono Band records. Another interview was for radio presenter Stuart Henry, and involved word association games.

The longest Apple interview from this day was with New York Times reporter Gloria Emerson. This confrontational encounter saw Emerson challenge Lennon and Ono on their peace initiatives, calling them self-promotional stunts. Lennon countered the accusation by describing them as preferable to "manifestos written by a lot of half-witted intellectuals" that were ineffective and went unread.

Lennon points out that Give Peace A Chance had been sung by hundreds of protesters at a recent anti-war moratorium in Washington, DC. This fails to sway Emerson, however, and she eventually walks out, interrupting Ono with the words: "Mrs Lennon, we're boring each other, so I'll go away. Happily."

More footage from this day was issued online by Ono in 2007. It began with a 43-second segment featuring Lennon playing Blue Suede Shoes, the first track from Live Peace In Toronto 1969 on the office turntable. A second clip involved Lennon telling a journalist that he and Ono didn't object to being criticised for having long hair or appearing nude if it helped reduce the attacks on their peace campaigning.

Yes, the Beatles are no longer........the Beatles.

George Harrison's enjoyed his second night on tour with Delaney & Bonnie, following his opening shows in the night before in Bristol.

Harrison performed on five of the tour's six dates, playing two shows each night. He appeared in Bristol, Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool and Croydon. He didn't perform at the Newcastle shows on December 5th, instead briefly leaving the tour to visit his unwell mother.

Several of the shows were also recorded for possible album release – the result was 1970's Delaney & Bonnie & Friends On Tour With Eric Clapton. Harrison was credited as "Mysterioso".

Harrison had previously performed at Birmingham's Town Hall way back on June 4, 1963, during The Beatles' tour with Roy Orbison.

Today stereo mixes of Hey Jude were worked on in preparation for the release of the US compilatio.

The songs were Lady Madonna and Rain, which had previously only been mixed in mono. Each was mixed just once in this 2.30-5.30pm session.

A new stereo mix of Octopus's Garden was also made, but for a different purpose. Ringo Starr had agreed to take part in an hour-long television special about George Martin, With A Little Help From My Friends, which was shown in the UK on 24 and 26 December 1969.

The mix of Octopus's Garden omitted The Beatles' bass guitar, lead guitar and piano, plus most of the vocals. These were re-recorded – with Starr and three session musicians – on 8 December at EMI Studios. The reason for this was a Musicians' Union ban on miming to records; because the new parts were different from those on Abbey Road, it was enough to fool the union into thinking the show contained a live take.

Ringo Starr was interviewed on this date by BBC's host, Tony Bilbow. The footage began with Starr, wearing a fur coat and a badge saying "Sink the Magic Christian", descending the steps of Apple Corps at 3 Savile Row, London, where he signed an autograph before getting into the back of his silver Mercedes-Benz limousine.

Starr was interviewed in the car and on a rowing boat, rowed by Bilbow and Starr down the Thames. The conversation was not broadcast in sequence, and jumped between the two locations several times.

The subjects of the interview included the new business regime at Apple, under the auspices of Allen Klein. "What we're really doing now is paying for when we opened it and played about," Starr said. "Because we used to keep everybody on forever, you know, just because they were like a mate or a pal. They never did the jobs, but we used to keep them on... It's not a playground anymore."

Perhaps keen to prove that his thoughts weren't dominated by business matters, Starr then turned to matters astronomical. He first claimed that there were 50 billion planets in the solar system, before revising the number downwards to just five. He then stated that there must be intelligent life beyond Earth, and that someone in America was building a "time spaceship" to allow interplanetary travel.

Starr explained that he was tired of commuting to London, and planned to move into the city. He then said how his son Zak assumed Beatles fans who visited the Starkey household were there to see him, and that the child didn't quite understand his father's fame.

Finally, he said how the experience of acting in Candy had paved the way for bigger roles, and how The Magic Christian was a suitable follow-up (both were based on novels by Terry Southern). Starr said how he liked simple Hollywood storytelling, and how as a child he had yearned to be a cowboy or pirate after seeing them in films.