I remember there were only two artists that I listened to as a kid. My mother made me sit down with headphones on and put some Mozart on. That was pure heaven to me. It took me to another place. And the other artist was the Beatles.
My father had this huge tape machine and some speakers he’d built himself in the 70’s. We also had a vinyl player (which I still have today!) but no cassette player, let alone a CD player. Pretty old school, I suppose. So anyway, the way I remember it is that my father would put some music on when he was working on something and you could hear it all around the flat. I’d be sat in our room playing or something and suddenly hear this exciting music and instantly felt drawn to it. So I’d sneak over to the livingroom where my father was working, sit on the couch and just listen to the awesome sounds that were coming out of those speakers. I distinctly remember hearing ’Bungalow Bill’ – as any kid would, I suppose – a lot, but also ’Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’. That’s not a bad introduction to pop music at all, now is it?
Later I learned that my father was actually listening to mix tapes and there was a lot of Led Zeppelin, Iron Butterfly and some Stones in there too, but I guess most of it was the Fab Four. I vaguely remember myself wondering how many singers this band had, but obviously still couldn’t put two and two together.
So when I started putting ’A Sea of Heroes’ together I obviously wanted to include something by The Beatles as well. I’d taught myself ’Blackbird’ on the guitar as so many others have as well, but I didn’t want to just do another ’Blackbird’ cover. I could tell without looking that Youtube was probably full of them already. So for a long time I didn’t know what to do. Then one day we were at the cinema with our kids watching a cartoon and it featured both ’Blackbird’ and ’With A Little Help From My Friends’ on the soundtrack. So while I can’t remember for the life of me which movie it was, I remember going ’Aaaah, that’s what I’m going to do!’ Never hurts to go to the movies folks, even if you can’t remember what you watched afterwards!
I also wanted to bring my brothers Jack and Joseph back for ’A Sea of Heroes’ after having so prominently featured in the ’Beggar Princess’ video. This seemed like the opportune moment to do that. Oh, and speaking of ”moment”. This is the first video I’ve shot with the help of Moment Lenses for iPhone. Those things are a real treat! It allows me to make the videos just that little bit more vibrant. Easiest way to spot their use is probably the fisheye lens I have on Jack on the drums. But enough with the geeking out!
I hope you enjoy this cover version. It does make me smile so I hope it does the same for you!
Until next time,
Jon
P.S. Here are the originals: