October 1982
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| A screenshot from the pilot episode, Thomas Down the Mine, filmed 1982. It was later reshot for the first series of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. The above screenshot was reused from the pilot. |
Between September and October 1982[1], a low budget, pre-production test pilot had been filmed to showcase how the show would look, based upon the story "Down the Mine" from the book Gordon the Big Engine (published 1953). It took only three weeks (fifteen business days) to film the pilot, ten of which were done on the actual filming itself. Reaction to the pilot was generally very positive, giving Allcroft and the rest of the crew the okay to proceed work on a full series.
The question now was, when the series came out, who would narrate the stories?
10 September 1982 - 1 February 1983
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| Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson, 1982. Three duets were recorded between the pair; "The Girl is Mine" was released on the latter's Thriller, recorded April 14-16, 1982. "Say Say Say" and "The Man" were recorded April and May 1981, with additional recording on August 25, 1983, but not released until October 3, 1983 as a non-album single. |
GEORGE HARRISON: "A lot of people were demanding for a follow up album to Fantasy, and we as the Beatles had been off of the radar for nearly a year. It was like the Mania of the 60s all over again, only with a much bigger crowd of old and new fans. Our backs were up against the wall. What could we have done to meet their demands?" (1995)
PAUL McCARTNEY: "I came up with the concept of war and peace, and the four of us wrote most of the songs around it; we had a few leftovers from when we did Quadruple Fantasy, and we brought them back for War and Peace. The best of the bunch was John's 'Nobody Told Me', which he initially offered Ringo to sing." (2013)
RINGO STARR: "As much as I loved 'Nobody Told Me', I told John that it better suited him than me." (2019)
After a year apart to focus on individual careers as well as their families, the Beatles went back into the studio that September to record War and Peace. A fair number of tracks were connected to the theme of contrasts such as "Keep Under Cover", "That's the Way It Goes", "You Can't Fight Lightning" and "Borrowed Time", as well as the bookend tracks "Tug of War" and "Pipes of Peace". In between were love songs "Wake Up My Love", "So Bad" and "Dear Madeline", the latter of which was dedicated to John Lennon's wife Madeline Kahn. The sessions lasted sporadically up to the beginning of February, with George Martin once again producing. It was later announced that War and Peace would be out this April.
February 1983
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| Behind the scenes for Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, 1983. The episodes being filmed around this time were Thomas and James and Strike Out!.[2] |
BRITT ALLCROFT: "The family were in the family room, and they were watching television. And I wasn't in the room, I was going past the door and I heard this voice. 'Oh my God; who's that?' And that's it. That's the voice! And I went into the room, and Ringo was being interviewed on a British chat show - I think it was Michael Parkinson. And I said, that's it; that's it! It's Ringo!" (date unknown; possibly late 1980s)
Allcroft's reasoning for Ringo being the narrator was because she thought children would relate to him, not because of his fame as a Beatle. However, he was reluctant to do so since he had never read any of the original Railway Series books as a child (he was almost five when the first book, The Three Railway Engines, was published on 12 May 1945), and thought children would be interested in modern things like dinosaurs with lasers. But it was after reading the books and meeting with Reverend Wilbert Awdry himself that Ringo had changed his mind.
RINGO STARR: "The others asked me where I'd been for a few days, and so I told them about that new children's show being produced under Apple Television. I showed them a few Thomas books and they had varying degrees of interest." (2015)
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| Ringo Starr with the model of Thomas the Tank Engine, 1983. |
PAUL McCARTNEY: "At the time, I had scripted a film about a day in the lives of the Beatles, like A Hard Day's Night, but twenty years later, y'know. The others said that it would never sell, and I was forced to abandon it in the end. Working with Thomas turned out to be a better use of our time, as it turned out. I loved working on it." (2015)[4]
GEORGE HARRISON: "I was somewhere between John and Ringo when it came to enthusiasm, but I played along anyway. Turned out to be more fun than I'd thought it would be." (1999)
With Ringo accepting the role as narrator, the additional enthusiasm from the other three Beatles took Britt Allcroft by surprise. After the initial shock had worn off, it was decided to give the engines their own distinct voices; John would provide the voices for Thomas himself as well as Gordon, Paul as Henry and Percy, George as Edward and James, and Ringo as Toby and Sir Topham Hatt, the Fat Controller. Allcroft would provide additional voices along with director David Mitton and music composers Mike O'Donnell and Junior Campbell, who based the theme song around the feel of the Beatles' "Mean Mr. Mustard". The recording sessions took around eight days, including Ringo re-doing some lines as the Fat Controller due to the tone of his voice. It would be over a year before the new series was unveiled to the world.
22 April 1983
Released: 22 April 1983
Recorded: 10 September 1982 - 1 February 1983
Producer: George Martin
Track listing[5]
Side A
Tug of War
I'm Stepping Out
Wake Up My Love
Keep Under Cover
Dream Away
Borrowed Time
In My Car
Side B
Mystical One
So Bad
Nobody Told Me
That's the Way It Goes
You Can't Fight Lightning
Dear Madeline
Pipes of Peace
War and Peace reached #1 in the United Kingdom for just two non-consecutive weeks, and no higher than #7 in the United States, which was a poor showing by the Beatles' standards. To make things worse, the first single, "Pipes of Peace" backed with "Dream Away" (11 April), despite charting at #1 in the United Kingdom, failed to reach the Top 20 the United States (#23) before quickly disappearing from the charts altogether.
Reception towards the album was overall poor, with one review saying, "Seriously? This is the best the Beatles could come up with after Quadruple Fantasy?" Others were just as harsh, if not more so, with comments such as, "Are the Beatles even relevant in America anymore?" or "With the Rolling Stones having gone off the radar and the Who splitting up, the Beatles now join them by putting out their worst album to date with War and Peace; 1983 looks to be the death knell of the 60s." All four Beatles, but especially Paul McCartney, took the slagging in the press pretty hard.
JOHN LENNON: "You know what a lot of those critics don't understand? Many of us artists from the 60s like the Beatles, Stones, the Who, what have you weren't just the 60s; you don't simply hang on for a decade or longer without feeling like you're part of something new and still have something to say. If this year is the death of the 60s, then why are we still listening to 'My Generation', 'Jumping Jack Flash' or 'Yesterday' on the radio instead of something like 'Pipes of Peace' or 'Athena'? It sounds as though some people are stuck in the 60s." (1983)
If there was any redeeming aspect to War and Peace, it was John's "Nobody Told Me", backed with the non-album B-side "Average Person", released as a single on 10 June. It charted much better in America at #5, while it reached #6 in the United Kingdom, receiving consistent praise from critics. Still, despite John's defiant stance in a television interview a few weeks after the album's release, the Beatles were now worried about their future. Could anything, if at all, be done to salvage their good name, or if they were doomed to remain a nostalgia act, unable to compete in the current market against their past selves or current musical acts like Duran Duran and the Culture Club? Was this the end for the Beatles... again?
3 June 1983
Released: 3 June 1983
Recorded: December 1982 - February 1983
Producer: Jeff Lynne
Track listing[6]
Side A
Secret Messages
Loser Gone Wild
Bluebird
Take Me On and On
Side B
Stranger
No Way Out
Beatles Forever
Letter From Spain
Danger Ahead
Side C
Four Little Diamonds
Train of Gold
Endless Lies
Buildings Have Eyes
Rock 'n' Roll is King
Side D
Mandalay
Time After Time
After All
Hello My Old Friend
Secret Messages was the Electric Light Orchestra's tenth official studio album, twelfth if the compilation albums Light Years (1978) and All Over the World (1980) were included. Much like its predecessor Time, it topped the charts in the United Kingdom for a few weeks, and it topped out at #12 in the United States. Secret Messages was also a double album, and with compact discs having just been released in North America and Europe, it was ELO's first album under that format. As usual, a tour followed the album lasting up to early 1984.
JEFF LYNNE: "One of the tracks on Messages, 'Beatles Forever', was the first to be recorded. By the time the album came out, War and Peace was thrashed by critics, and I kept it on ELO's album as a response to them. Looking back, it was so fawning and over the top that I was tempted to remove it altogether, and maybe redo it at some point." (2018)
Summary of single releases from Electric Light Orchestra's Secret Messages
- "Rock 'n' Roll is King" / "After All" - 6 June 1983 (#6 UK, #10 US)
- "Secret Messages" / "Four Little Diamonds" - 3 September 1983 (#20 UK, #58 US)
- "Stranger" / "Train of Gold" - 5 December 1983 (#17 UK)
Footnotes
- In OTL, the pilot was filmed in March and April 1983. I moved production forward with the likelihood that with Apple Corps gaining the rights to co-produce and distribute the show, it could be worked on earlier. Likewise, the filming for the first series was moved forward from the original dates of production (September 1983 - March 1984).
- Thomas and James is OTL's Thomas and the Breakdown Train and James and the Coaches, while Strike Out! is based upon Tenders and Turntables and Trouble in the Shed.
- In OTL, John Lennon had been offered to narrate the show, but he told the producers to "fuck off". Had he survived past 1980 and saw how successful Thomas the Tank Engine was, I'd imagine that John would've regretted rejecting the gig, even praising Ringo's narration.
- This means that Give My Regards to Broad Street never gets produced in TTL; the money used to produce it goes onto more worthwhile projects. In OTL, filming had started in November 1982.
- Tracks are sourced from Paul McCartney's Tug of War and Pipes of Peace, John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Milk and Honey, George Harrison's Gone Troppo, and Ringo Starr's Old Wave and Stop and Smell the Roses. "Dear Madeline" is OTL's "Dear Yoko" from Double Fantasy.
- Track listing is based upon the original double album version of Secret Messages, the 2001 release of which was the primary source. "Buildings Have Eyes", "Mandalay" and "Hello My Old Friend" are all sourced from Afterglow, and "Beatles Forever" remains unreleased officially.
Author's Comments
Happy Memorial Day, everyone! This is another chapter that I'd been looking forward to writing up, largely because I'd been a fan of Thomas the Tank Engine since I was little, especially with Ringo Starr's narrating the first two seasons of the show. I even spiced it up a bit by having the other three Beatles involved in the production as well. I originally had other actors involved based upon who was popular in the acting scene of the 1980s at the time like Nigel Planer as Henry, Brian Blessed as Gordon, Rowan Atkinson as James and Jim Broadbent as Sir Topham Hatt. Man, I'd have loved to hear what that would've sounded like! That's more or less how I picture the engines' voices in the 1980s.
Outside of that, things aren't going so hot for the Beatles right now; it can't be all positive, after all, but it isn't as bad as it seems for them outside of America. Rest assured, things do get better for them. War and Peace is the last album by them being discussed in this story, but I'm still not done with them yet. Likewise, this is the final major appearance of the Electric Light Orchestra in the story, though they've not broken up (yet).
Meanwhile, I'd like to give a little shout out to both the Something Creative and A Crazy Gift of Time blogs, both of which have gone through a reboot. So far, they're both off to a great restart, and if you haven't already, I recommend checking both of them out. At one point, I do intend on a Strawberry Peppers reboot, but before I can do so, I've got seven more chapters to write up, bringing the total up to eighty, which is a nice round number. At the moment, I'm working on a draft timeline for what I'm calling The Second Coming, and it's constantly evolving. Once I finally start the writing process (whenever that is), I'll be starting up a new blog while this one will stay up as the first draft so you can see the differences between the two versions.
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