Daryl Runswick

The Beatles Connexion

Scurrilous! Not only to borrow the title of my Electric Phoenix Beatles medley from The King's Singers' album, but to pinch their cover picture too. Irrelevant that I produced that album. Well, really.

Terry Edwards asked me to make this medley for a performance at a festival in Taormina, Sicily, in 1991, in the wonderful open-air Roman amphitheatre overlooking the sea. Electric Phoenix were there to do Berio's Sinfonia, which has eight singers, so in my medley there are 8 vocal parts. In subsequent performances, and in this recording, the four principal singers (Judith Rees, Meriel Dickinson, myself and Terry) doubled two parts each.

Previously unissued

   14'28

The medley has a fully-produced rock backing track which I made at my studio The DReam Room in London, enjoying the luxury of being a Phil Specter-type wall-of-sound arranger and all the players too. Careful listeners will spot a couple of 'homages' to the original Beatles recordings (the guitar solo from the LP version of Let It Be, the drum fill from Abbey Road...)

Luciano Berio was present at the premiere in 1991, with his wife Talia and Giuseppe Sinopoli, who was conducting Lohengrin in the same amphitheatre on other nights of the festival. At the meal after the concert, Talia leant over to me and smiling, crooned 'Something in the way she moves...' – my solo.