The start of this year has been a busy and productive period. After the enormous blank that was largely 2020 it was great to get a phone call from BBC 2 asking if I would be interested in recording sound for a new series ‘In Ten Pictures’. Soon afterwards with two big kit bags and my stands and booms I was driving through the blizzards and freeze of January and February across the UK, in the middle of one of our lockdowns, to film interviews with some amazing people who were either experts or had been close personal friends with John Lennon. The entire series is being broadcast at the moment on the BBC, links for iplayer below.
A still taken during the set up for our interview with Mike McCartney, Paul’s brother, in a beautiful little restaurant in the Wirral. One of the photographs featured in the film is Mike’s picture of Paul, George and John taken around 1958 performing as a three piece at a relatives wedding. The black and white photograph, famous shot by Astrid Kirchheerr, was taken only two years later in 1960 in Hamburg.
Driving through the Kentish Weald in unimaginably bad weather one morning in January. Not only the weather but the strict COVID restrictions meant a lot of the time it felt like you were driving through an apocalypse, there were so few drivers on the road throughout this time. Motorways were frequently empty and service stations were like ghost towns.