iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Leander’s is much better. Apart from anything else, what is George Martin doing with that stupid trumpet? Good call, as always, Paul McCartney.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Great! Will you do Revolution 9 or aren’t you saying?

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Loved your poem so much I bought Seeing Stars just to read the (wonderful, you were right) The Last Panda. Thanks David! I can’t remember if you like Amis fils? If so, you should go on that podcast too. Are you doing My Favourite Beatles Song? Hope so. (Ps it’s my birthday too yeah 🙂)

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Bot, Jane. Save your energy.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Thanks Nemo. Do you know if there’s anywhere to read more about this? Would be interested in the details?

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Please do this David, if you can. I have quoted you on the Beatles more than probably any other writer. I listened to Revolution 9 for the first time forty years after it first creeped the hell out of me as a ten year old, thanks to your brilliant essay on it in Revolution. This is a great podcast!

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Yes, sorry not to be clearer. I was reminded last night of Amis’s oft-used metaphor that a writer should welcome the reader into his house, sit them down with a drink and amuse them kindly. Self was like an old hermit shouting abuse through his letter box. Absolutely bizarre.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

It was a fun but bizarre evening. Self chose to absolutely slate Amis for 40 minutes straight, before conceding in a few final words that his early novels (up to and including Money) were brilliant. The discussion after his departure was great fun however and I look forward to hearing it again.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

I mean, he’s right, isn’t he?

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Wonderful. A b side. What were they like.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Joe Orton, about whom I wrote my MA dissertation many years ago. Met Paul McCartney and wrote a putative screenplay for the Beatles, Up Against It, but it was much too naughty and was dropped.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Imho the best live Beatles performance in the Anthology along with Long Tall Sally on the 1963 Drop-In Show in Sweden. (Apart from Ed Sullivan and Royal Variety which don’t really count.)

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Yes there’s not much resolution for poor old mum and dad. I think in 1967 the general reaction would be to feel good for Melanie Coe more than sad for the parents. So giving the parents a voice, sympathetically, is brilliant. Ps I think the For No One line means ‘you are doomed to remember her!’

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Yeah no doubt. And I agree it looks more like Ringo than Jagger: that curling upper lip. I hope you’re right, I’m with Andrew Hickey on the Stones…

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

I think the other difference is that there is a bleak lack of redemption in the earlier three songs. There is also Paul’s thematic fear of ‘not existing’, of absence (‘half the man’, ‘you see nothing’, the face kept in a jar). I feel at the end of SLH the girl is moving on and the music revolves.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

I have always thought that it’s the Stones. I’ve even seen it said that Charlie Watts is in Paul’s ear as a pun on ‘ear-drum-mer’. And then the Stones repaid the compliment on Satanic Majesties. But it’s also true that none of the drawings look remotely like Bill Wyman.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

I wrote about a third of a book about Paul’s sad trilogy: Yesterday, For No One, Eleanor Rigby. 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person. All unresolved, all personal-but-not-personal. I agree SLH kind of fits into the sequence, except Paul is a pure observer. In the others, he is profoundly present.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Yeah that’s about right 👍

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Wow! Paul fan incoming… For No One is an astonishing, unmatched masterpiece. Possibly his greatest lyrics. Here There and Everywhere used to be Paul’s answer when he was asked about his favourite song of his own… it is amazingly good, the arrangement is not great.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Swap 3 and 11 and this is me.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

When the pigeons are pecking at his seed: Goethe.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Goethe was most magnificently celebrated by Chas and Dave, the old cowson.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

… as Paul himself has acknowledged, ruefully.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Ach, give it a bloody break Geoff. And go on the My Martin Amis podcast, it’s brilliant and you’d be brilliant on it. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/m...

podcasts.apple.com

"Amis's talent was to put words to things in ways both unobvious and inevitable." David Szalay

Podcast Episode · My Martin Amis · 12 February · 44min

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Thanks Chris for the fascinating watch. My goodness the Stones are absolutely dreadful. Cacophonous, lazy and unentertaining. Keith Richards smiling at the camera is a a hauntingly horrible spectacle. Bill Wyman was always a hauntingly horrible spectacle just by turning up. Good Lord.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

They’re not even good at it. They just do it a lot.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

I also like two-word phrases where the meaning changes with emphasis. Rubbish bag. French teacher. Chocolate lorry. Etc.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Englebert Humperdinck watched the 1970 World Cup quarter final between England and Germany with the nine-year-old Gary Lineker. He was mates with his dad. True story.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

I shall wait anxiously to hear that you survived being taken out to the pictures 🙂

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Happy birthday! 26 is not as good as 27, but it’s better than 28. All downhill from then until… 64!

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

… and his partner is the only Oscar to win an Oscar!

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

I told Robert Lindsay, while drunk at a party, that I didn’t think the translation of the play Becket, in which he had just starred with Derek Jacobi to huge acclaim, fully captured the existentialist subtext of the original Anouilh play. He went to talk to someone else. Also kind of a dick move.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

I bored Joe Jackson to tears while very drunk at a wedding on the Isle of Wight.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

A reminder that obnoxious provocative headline-chasing interviews are not a recent phenomenon!

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

He will Nemo. He is the most successful musician and composer of the last century but in all his many interviews he just says ‘If people like it, that’s what matters’. A true hero.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

May I sum up? Lewisohn is a matchless & tireless expert. Leslie’s writings on PM + J&P are brilliant love letters about this incredible phenomenon. Brown’s treatment is huge fun & justly popular. C Shaw is the best Fabs podcaster ever (as host + guest). Nemo is a VERY much-loved online mate. AYNIL ❤️

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

(‘are behind’, sorry!)

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Hey Ian & Chris you have behind some of the most brilliant commentary on the Beatles music and legacy of the last few years, giving thousands of people huge pleasure. I’m sure I speak for many when I say I hope you will patch up your differences and hopefully collaborate at some point in future.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Christopher… are you being mischievious again?

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

“Beatles or Stones?” is surely a familiar, even clichéd question when making a quick assessment of someone’s artistic preferences? That it is a misguided equivalence is surely Ian Leslie’s point…

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Crying-laughing while I am driving is not good and safe, friends. Please be less amusing in future 🙂

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

I remember one live song in particular which ended on a high note sustained for about twenty seconds with that syrupy, wobbly vibrato Cilla deployed at moments of high excitement, and it sounded exactly - exactly - like a car alarm.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Loved the bit about Cilla. Reminded me of the classic Dame Edna bit on Parky m.youtube.com/watch?v=CmLa...

m.youtube.com

Dame Edna on Cilla Black

YouTube video by Matgo Styles

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

… and St Pancras Old Church is most famous as a key location for the Beatles ‘Mad Day Out’ day-long 1968 photoshoot with Don McCullin and others. The most famous picture forms the double spread on the inside of the 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 compilations. Hooray!

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

This is the one with… David Quantick! But yes, Samira’s was also fab and groovy.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

I first owned and heard the White Album at the age of 10, in 1977. In 2021, at the age of 54, I listened to Revolution 9 for a second time, and very much enjoyed it. The 2021 event only happened because of David Quantick’s brilliant books and matchless podcast appearances. Cheers David.

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SgtPep @sgtpepper0106.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Ooh, didn’t know about that. Thanks!

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