SPEAKER_03 0:36

To get the trousers on, uh they have to remove uh boots and of course being young fellows and uh sweating in uh clubs um their feet thanks to how I haven't uh after they left the premises I had to spray uh.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Walter, if you wouldn't mind telling us a couple of stories, please, and what your memories were from that infamous tailoring session with the Beatles.

SPEAKER_03 2:19

Yes, i i uh it's a piece of history really. It's uh was 196 March 1962. Brian Epstein had been a longstanding uh customer, and anyone that uh knows anything about Brian Epstein, if you look at photographs of him, you'll see that he's always well dressed, very fastidious uh with his clothes, Brian Epstein was. Um, and he always used to come in to see me at um on a Wednesday because he had three record shops in Liverpool called NEMS. His family business uh his parents ran uh a furniture store that was called North End Music Stores. So he made it his record shops into they were called NEMS, and he had three of them uh in the Liverpool City. Um so he came in on this particular Wednesday and uh he said, Walter, next week I'm bringing you four lads in, musicians, I'm going to m manage them. And I said, uh who are they, Mr. Epstein? And he said, They're called the Beatles. And I thought, what a stupid name that is for a music group because I just associated it with the insect.

SPEAKER_02 3:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:40

Uh anyway, he duly brought them in and uh I s sorted out cloths for them and I alighted on um a mix of silk and wool, sort of uh electric blue, uh slub silk and wool uh fabric, which was very attractive, and the price of it was twenty-eight guineas. We used to talk guineas in those days. And Brian said to me, it's a bit much for them, you know, they're only just starting out. So um we gave them a three guinea discount, we made it twenty-five guineas, and uh I styled the suits for them, measured them all up, and of course it wasn't um Ringo Starr, the drummer, in those days, it was Pete Best.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 4:27

That was the uh who I measured. I know I never met uh Ringo Starr. And um suits had to be ready in two weeks because they were appearing on I think it was Granada TV in a fortnight, I think it was a Friday evening show. And uh so they were coming in the following uh Wednesday for fittings, uh which they did. And of course uh the uh the suits were uh slightly Italian style, they were drop shoulders, short boxy jackets, very tight trousers, and of course the the famous winkle picker boots. And um to get the trousers on they they had to remove their boots and of course being young fellows and sweating in clubs, um their feet stank to high heaven. Uh after they left the premises I had to spray the the shop. But while they were waiting to be fitted, they were very uh lively uh young men and their language was choice. Now my father was in the building trade and but he abored bad language and that was the way I was brought up. So I was I'm the same and I'm the same today, it was the same when I was in the army. I cannot stand foul language. And uh so I can remember saying to the members of the Beatles, I wonder if I can ask you to moderate your language and remind you of your in a tailor shop because we had a very high class uh clientele, you know.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:01

People effing and blinding, uh sounded bad, very bad to me. Anyway, we we made the suits on the uh Julie appeared on TV. Uh Brian Epstein said, Well, you're gonna get lots of business out of them, but um w we didn't actually see them again, although Paul McCartney came in um a couple of times for trousers. We made him some trousers. And Paul's father came in because it Paul's father lived in uh Heswell, Baskerville Road, and we did a um a suit for Paul's father. And do you do you remember the scaffold, do you?

SPEAKER_01 6:40

You left to in lie to me, Walter.

SPEAKER_03 6:42

You do no you you know, it's it's funny you you know, I mean I forget my age. I'm eighty-two, you know. The scaffold used to appear on a show on television every Saturday night called That Was the Week that was. It was um I've you probably heard of it. They used to take a rise out of politicians and so so on, and the scaffold were quite a famous group. Uh Paul McCartney wrote a couple of um numbers for them. Uh I don't know if you if you ever know them. It's one one is called the Ain Tree Iron, which is a railway bridge uh n near where the Grand National is run in Liverpool. And the other one was Lily the Pink and The Scaffold recorded those, and they were both hit records. And po um Paul's brother, Mike, was a member of the Scaffold. Y y y you you heard of Roger McGough, the poet, have you?

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Yeah, he was part of the Mersey sound, wasn't he?

SPEAKER_03 7:40

Yes, well Roger McGough was a member, and of course the founder of the group was um John Gorman. Now John Gorman is a very old friend of mine. I I've dealt with John for well, since 1949. And he was the founder of the group, he was always uh something of a an entertainer, uh he long before he became a professional entertainer, and he uh founded the scaffold, and as I say, Paul McCartney's brother was um a member, but Mike didn't like to trade on the family name, so instead of calling himself Mike McCartney, he called himself Mike McGear. And uh so that was the the s sort of story. Anyway, j j just to follow on with that I uh spoke to the girls in the workroom and I said I said, Who are the head of this group that I've been in called the Beatles? And they said, Oh yes, they're fab, they play at the cavern in Liverpool. And I said, They'll never get anywhere with a name like that. Which teaches you humility, you know. Um anyway, um the girls said, You know that group? Their record is in the top twenty. It's uh that's a program that used to be on uh BBC uh radio every s Sunday afternoon. I think it was around about uh two o'clock. And uh so I thought I must tune in and hear this record. Anyway, they were number eighteen in the charts. And I thought, gosh, that they they're actually uh in the top twenty. I mean to get a record in the top twenty in the sixties was you know, it was quite something. Anyway, the next week it was up to fourteen, it was r obviously rising. I I don't know if you know the story, but um Brian Epstein with his three record shops apparently bought twenty thousand copies of the record. And immediately the record went to the top. And of course it turned out to be an astute business deal because they saw like hot cakes out of his three shops, you know, because they were really uh you know, very um popular, and of course thereafter every record they brought out just went straight to the top. And um uh what is strange, I went uh for years and I I still never realized that the Beatles was um a play on the word beat. I mean you think I must have seen the w the name in on the headlines on the newspapers and the mentioned, but uh when Liverpool was um vying for the capital of culture, um we had um a tribute band, uh y i the the counterfeit Beatles or something like that, I think they call themselves. And uh we had to reproduce you know the the suit they're famous for with the light grey with the round neckline, it's we call it a card in neckline. They were made in London, we didn't do that. And um we but we had to reproduce those suits for their tour of Europe promoting Liverpool as the capital of culture. And uh when I was looking at this book with the pictures uh uh of the Beatles, and of course the headline of the book was The Beatles and uh I looked at the spelling of the that's not the way you spell beat. Beetle and uh I realized uh it was a play on the beach, so it was quite clever. They they were uh quite uh uh I I was quite quite impressed in the end because they they were v and are very talented individuals. You y y you know, I mean if you uh uh uh I have you have you read um Mark Lewis owns book?

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Yeah, the all these years, right, the the free parter.

SPEAKER_03 11:26

There's four pages devoted to me in the in the book. Um I I I got um a record uh a telephone call about it must be about four years ago. And um this uh fellow said I'm writing a book on the Beatles and uh I I've had a job tracking anybody down because you know, it 'tis a long time ago and I'm eighty two and um he s he said, I'd like to interview, just like you're asking me now. He said, Would you mind if I come along and interviewer? I said, No, that's fine, come along and um he um apparently um he had been speaking to George Harrison's widow and she has got one of the s you know, George's suit that um I styled for them and measured them for. And uh of course he got the name of a firm and he tracked me down. And uh so that was how uh he came to interview me anyway. That was uh that must be at least three or four years ago. Um, about two years ago I got a call. Um no, I got an email inviting me to uh the Lither, you know, which is um the you know, the Liverpool Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts founded by Paul McCartney, um, uh to say that uh this book was being launched on the Beatles, so I thought, what have they invited me? I'd forgotten about the interview. Um and then I thought about it and I thought, well I wonder if it's anything to do with that book. Anyway, I thought, well I'll go. Because I was at the opening, I was the mayor of Whittle in nineteen ninety-five. And I was as the mayor of Whittle, I was invited to the opening of uh the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts. They invited all the local civic dignitaries uh to the event. Very big events, you know, the streets were crowded with people, and um uh I I I uh w w w went there and uh anyway the the book was launched there. So uh Mark Lewison is speaking about how he'd interviewed him, he worked for f a f few years. He'd been all over the world, anybody that had met the Beatles he'd interviewed them. And uh I uh he was going through, you know, people and uh he said that um one of the people I interviewed who made their first suit for television, um uh Walter Smith, and he's in the audience here. Would you mind standing up, Walter? So this the theatre's absolutely packed. I mean, you t to be a guest there, you I mean, he had um so I stood up. I got a round of applause, you know, which quite surprised me. But they had you know, the Beatles hairdresser that did the famous haircut. Uh he was there and pupils that went to school with um um oh just about anybody that had anything to do with the Beatles and he had interviewed everyone. I mean the book is um as big as my the span of my hand. I mean it it's a a heavy tomb. I mean I I I took it with me, um I was interviewed on the radio um a couple of weeks ago and I took the book with me just to show the interviewer. Um but but it it's it's quite an a academic work. I I I was showing it to somebody the other day and I thought uh I I I must read it. I i the trouble is every time I go on holiday when it's when I uh read books. It's such a heavy piece of work and you know your luggage when you're going on holiday, you've never got enough room everywhere. So I've still never read the book fully. And i it it's it's quite interesting. I mean, um th things like I I mean one of the fascinating things to me, having sort of been there at the outset, is the way um Pete Best was written out of the picture. You know, uh I I mean uh again I don't know if you know the story, but um Pete Best's mother at their house they had um a basement and the Beatles used to play there and all the local kids used to go in, the Beatles used to play for them. And um of course the s the story is that um when they were getting uh going, um they said to uh Brian Epstein, uh, you'll have to get rid of Pete best. We want Ringo Star, he's a better drummer. And of course he he was uh kicked out. Very sad really, you know.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Yeah, this was on the back of the tour they did in Hamburg, is that right? That's right. Yeah, um I think they weighed him up out in Hamburg and then drafted Ringo in halfway through if I if I remember rightly.

SPEAKER_03 16:18

Yeah, I'm I I I'm not sure of uh uh of that. I mean uh i uh i it would be interesting. I mean, Mark will have uh written it in and um yes, it's so it's quite uh yeah, an interesting story. I mean, uh w what has amazed me is like, you know, people like yourself ringing me up. I mean, um a couple of years ago, I'm measuring uh a gentleman here, and um he said to me, You had something to do with the Beatles, didn't you? I said, Yeah, how how did you know that? He said, Well, I'm uh the city editor of the Liverpool Daily Post and he said I was going through the file and um I came across your name and he said, Well um uh it must have been more than uh 'cause it was their fiftieth anniversary, so it's probably my my memory from I think it was only last year, it's it's probably five years ago. He um he said, I'll send a reporter and a photographer round and uh they uh came and interviewed me like you are and took a photograph. And of course, if you put Walter Smith and the Beatles, that article is um on the internet. In fact I'm just look I've got a pic I've got a copy of it here, just looking at it. No, it doesn't give a date. Yeah, uh the there was a c quite a b uh it's quite a big um article and there's a photograph there of the uh the Beatles with Pete Best in it. Uh it's just here, new image, a rare photograph of the Beatles sold at auction by Byrne, Byrne's auctioneers and valuers showing them in Walter suits.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 18:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Walter I'm curious to know what happened when Paul McCartney came back in the shop. So did he come in unannounced? Did he catch it by surprise? What happened there?

SPEAKER_03 18:11

Yeah, w but was it a shop? Yeah, we uh not not really. I mean i w we we were uh the main people th this was in Birkenhead, you know. Um I mean I'm in Liverpool now. Uh I I I I moved to Liverpool in nineteen sixty five. Sixty Yeah, nineteen sixty five I I went to Liverpool and um because we had three shops. Uh Birkenhead, which is where we started. Then we had Liverpool, we bought the old tailoring firm of Clement H. Sunland, and then we opened in Chester. Now, strangely enough, Chester still exists. I I I I I didn't realise I I went to see my old colleague uh Fausto. He he wasn't part of the firm in those days, but um he still trains with the name of Ben O'Dorn.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Wow, an amazing story. So uh Walter, now you're up in uh Old Hall Street. Old Hall Street, yeah. Okay, um and that's by Prince's Dock, right? Is that is that close?

SPEAKER_03 19:16

Uh well uh the the best thing we know, which most people know from all over the North West, is we're very close to the Liverpool Echo uh building and the passport office. Um and we're opposite the Cotton building.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

I see. So well uh how many people like me call you up on a daily basis and want the historian how much of a tourist spot now has your shop become?

SPEAKER_03 19:40

Well well uh i it it surprised you and I get um letters from America, you know. Um I got um a letter from somebody asking me could could uh could I send them some of our publicity material uh from America. He was in Ohio. So I wasn't quite sure what he wanted because it surprised me. So I actually rang him up and he it was over the moon that I'd rang him. And um I said, You just want um anything w w you know, any of our brochures with uh pictures Oh yes, fine. And uh so I I did that and I said to him, I must tell you my uh good friend uh Jerry Williams, um he's an Anglo American uh historian, especially Liverpool's involvement with the American Civil War. And he he actually goes to America and lectures uh on it. And uh I said, and just to tell you how much of uh he he's into America, he has the Ohio marching band on his um mobile phone. So this fellow sent me um a CD of the Ohio marching band, which I gave to Jerry. You know.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

Yeah, incredible.

SPEAKER_03 20:56

Well a little thanks for your time. Uh you know, I'm uh I'm conscious you've got a life to live outside of this, so Yeah, well any time uh as I say, it's uh uh I I I can't tell you how uh I mean, never in my life did I expect that this would be uh a famous part of my working life, you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

And so early on, bro, you were the the very first tailor, right, before Dougie Millings took over, is that right?

SPEAKER_03 21:21

Yes, oh yes. Now he made the rounded neckline, the the cardin. And uh uh the uh I thought from Mark Lewis on he'd track me down because the suits in we've got a museum uh dedicated to the Beatles in Liverpool here. And uh I thought he'd tracked me down, he'd seen the suits in uh the the Beatles Museum. So I've got a a um a leaflet here, um which I I I can't even remember. I'll tell you, I'm just gonna look at it. It says, uh The Beatles First Taylor uh the suits I designed for them are now on display at Liverpool Beatles music. The original Beatles shoots. The replicas.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Dougie Millings.

SPEAKER_03 22:25

He must have reproduced them for the um Beatles Museum. Because of the fact that you treat me down because you shouldn't. George Harrison's widow has still got the original suit.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Olivia Harrison. Yeah, that'd be awesome to see that. But I mean it must be great to know that your original suits are out there somewhere. And that people still own these suits.

SPEAKER_03 23:10

Well, they they don't know where the others are. Nobody knows where the others are saying George Widow has uh has the original. So I suppose that must be quite a collector's piece, really. What do you think of I mean to me I can still remember that scene and the um the occasion very well indeed, and yes I think gosh it was 1962.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

Well you'll have to release your own book. What was uh what was the um actual book that you were featured in? Because Mark wrote a few didn't he?

SPEAKER_03 23:50

I think it's Cold Beatles and it's it's m and anyway. If you if you Google Mark Lewison, it's it's Lewis L-E-W-I-S O-H-N. Like something. I think it's the German shown, you know. I speak a little German, so it's just a German word shown. Yeah, so Mark Lewis. And um because um you open the book because he wanted to speak to the shooting Beatles' museum. And um his email address. And he should know no um shoulders with uh George Hanson's wisdom. Um if you spent um evening how he interviewed so many people going back of uh period of uh people's fame that brought them all together for the book.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

Well yeah, that's that must have been quite annoying.

SPEAKER_03 25:01

Yeah, it was just a big occasion. When they have the books and um there were 50% of copy. Um 25% of books have no idea how much the invitation is all sorts of invitations because it's most eminent people on the pick the book. Um within the money in my pocket. And um just to work here and 25 pieces of the balls of a company. Never really you know, one of these days we can settle down and just read about because it really is interesting. Uh I mean the whole story, I mean, how they came from for ordinary lamps to be international stars and uh you know, the place is probably firmly fixed in history, huh?

SPEAKER_01 26:41

Walter Smith there from Craft Tailoring. Thank you, Walter, for all of those wonderful memories and for sharing those with us. And now a word from our sponsor.

SPEAKER_06 26:50

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SPEAKER_04 27:24

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SPEAKER_05 27:37

Some years later, that nice young man from England was on his way home. So he is a little boy and was signing some autographs for no particular reason at all. Somebody shot.

SPEAKER_01 28:01

I'd like to welcome to the podcast Paul DeNoya, author of Conversations with Paul McCartney. Paul, could you just tell us a little bit about yourself, please, and how you got involved with the Beatles?

SPEAKER_00 28:11

Yeah, well, I I started my career on the uh NME uh many years ago. And uh, because I was in the um NME office and I was the bloke from Liverpool, whenever there was anything kind of uh Beatly um uh to be written, they'd usually get me to do it, you know, and then one day they actually sent me up back up to Liverpool to uh to meet McCartney um backstage at a gig he was doing in Liverpool. So that was the first time I met him and um interviewed him a few more times after that and um got on well with him actually, and then he started getting me to do work for him and doing his tour programmes and help him with his press kits and all that kind of thing. So I got to know him very well and uh interviewed him about 30 times or so over the years, which I eventually with his uh help compiled into uh into a book called Conversations with McCartney, which uh is the one that's out now, you know.

SPEAKER_01 29:02

Yes, it yeah, it's a fascinating book, and we'll leave a link to that in the show notes. Paul, can you just tell us a little bit of the reasoning uh behind why Brian Epstein took the Beatles away from this teddy boy leathers look they had going on in the Hamburg days to when they came back to Liverpool and were going to be presented to the studio, so they had to get suited and modernised. Can you just give us a little bit of background to that, please?

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Yeah, well, as um up until and during the time in Hamburg, the uh the black leathers had really come to dominate their look. Um, they kind of moved away from being uh teddy boys on a budget in the Liverpool suburbs, and then as soon as they could get some black leathers, they thought uh this made them look cool and like uh look like uh the great rocker hero Gene Vincent. So there were those in Hamburg, but at a certain point, of course, Brian Epstein came into their life. Uh Brian Epstein was the uh the local record shop manager, but he was a he was a dapper young fellow himself, Brian Epstein. He was in his uh mid to late twenties when he met the Beatles. And one of his first bits of advice was uh, come on, you've got to smarten yourselves up, boys. You know, we're uh uh you're a professional um entertainment combo, and we want to get on TV and things. And um Walter Smith might have mentioned to you uh Brian Epstein used to go to uh Walter Smith's um tail uh the tailors that Walter worked for, Ben Dorm. Uh Brian was in there all the while because he'd like to get uh bespoke clothes made for himself. So uh he used that tail to get the Beatles' first suits for a forthcoming Grenada TV appearance. And from that point on, the Beatles wore suits pretty much uh all the while. Uh Walter made the first um suits for them. Then they moved down to London and they hooked up with um a guy called Dougie Millings in um Soho, who was a pretty well-known show business uh tailor. Not quite Savile Row, but Soho, so a bit a bit racier, really. And um Dougie made them suits, including most famously, Pierre Cardan over in Paris had just brought out these famous uh collarless suits, you know, the light grey collarless suits. And Dougie just did a knockoff basically, you know, he said we'll have a bit of that, and uh made them uh Pierre Cardan imitation suits. And um that became the I suppose the definitive look of the early Beatles, really, that look. Um but they wore suits pretty much regularly for the first few years up until uh up until the mid-sixties. The one of the amongst their last shows was at uh Shea Stadium where they're wearing again, they're wearing identical things, but they're more like safari jackets, aren't they? Those uh things. What McCartney said to me a few times is early on in his life he'd been to uh I think Butlins uh holiday camp as a kid, and they had um entertainment on in Butlins, and he was always impressed by these groups who would all wear identical outfits. He just looked very professional. This looked like you were really in show business, you know, so we thought uh we've got to do this. So he and Brian were really on the same page, I guess. And um uh Brian suggested suits, the Beatles went along with suits, and McCartney says, Once we went into a dressing room and we all got kitted out in exactly the same thing, it transformed us. You know, we became we became this uh four-headed monster. I think he just thought uh if a group is a if a group really is a group, then this increases their telepathy, I suppose. The they bond uh as a as a band, as a musical unit when they're all wearing the same thing. And that was the Beatles' policy up until I guess until the end of their um live days. And even then, after that, the next thing they did was Sergeant Pepper when they've got um similar uh a similar uniform look going on. And um I just I think uh obviously the music is the thing with the Beatles, but they were actually very thoughtful dressers. Um Epstein was a big influence on the way that they dressed because again, McCartney says, Brian wasn't just our manager, he was Epstein was a uh frustrated um theatrical impresario, and I think Epstein's view of the Beatles was that they were a kind of little theatrical production for Brian to dress up, and um uh and he always encouraged him to pay a lot of attention to that, which uh McGuire in particular was uh extremely receptive to.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

Yeah, I actually had that written down, so we may as well tap onto that now. Did um so the Beatles always look like they could reinvent themselves at will, you know, stylistically as well as musically. Uh what was the thinking behind the Sergeant Pepper's outfits and how much of an influence did Brian Epstein have in that in that process?

SPEAKER_00 33:44

I think by the time I think by the time that Sergeant Pepper was approach Brian was taking more of a back seat, um, you know, part of his personal unhappiness, I think, was that he didn't really have this uh toy band to play with and dress up anymore because they were they were growing up and they were getting more um into um expressing their own ideas. And one of their ideas, and I think Paul's in particular, was wouldn't it be cool if we had a kind of fictitious alter ego for ourselves, you know, Sergeant Pepper's band who were able to do things that broke away from the stereotypical Beatles image that we've had for a few years. So um no longer is it uh, you know, John is this person, Paul is the cute one, uh, George is the quiet one, Ringo is the funny one. Let's just invent a whole new persona for ourselves, call it Sergeant Pepper. And Paul, as well as the artist uh Peter Blake, who was working with them on the visuals, and his wife Jan, they were very interested in the idea of an old Edwardian band. And it was mid-60s, and of course, that Edwardian look was just becoming um very fashionable, you know, along the King's Road and Carnaby Street, and they uh latched onto us very early on and popularized it. So they dressed up in as kind of psychedelic uh Edwardian band men, you know. That was the Sergeant Pepper conceit, really, which of course looked uh looked brilliant, but that was probably the last time that they had a put-together band uh look, I guess, because after that they they just kind of went their four separate ways, um, in several respects, but including including in costumes. But the interesting cover, in a way, is um is Abbey Road, because uh, which was a few years after Brian had um died, actually. But it's often said, um, and John would often say this, so Brian made us wear suits, you know. We didn't want to wear suits, but Brian made us wear suits. I'm not so sure about that actually, because you look at you look at Abbey Road three or four years after Brian, and and three of the four of them are are wearing suits. They they moved on to another tailor um in Savile Road called Tommy Nutter, whose uh assistant was um a guy who's still going to uncalled Edward Sexton. And uh Nutter and Sexton um had a very strong line in very bold um suits, uh silhouettes often and double-breasted. Edward Sexton is still very uh widely known for these extremely strong um double-breasted suits that he makes, uh, which look great. McCartney, I think, stuck with um Tommy Nutter and Edward Sexton, uh, as did um John and Ringo. Um so he was a big uh influence, uh uh both both uh Nutter and Sexton. Uh but the Beatles loved their suits actually, and they they wore them. Um even John wore suits uh in uh for his public appearance, often in court, actually in America. It's like the old uh what you call the scouter in a suit kind of joke. But um John, even John uh did love his suit, his famous white suit became emblematic of his peace campaigning days, and uh to this day McCartney will uh put on a suit um uh uh an awful lot of the time.

SPEAKER_01 36:50

Yeah, that's another thing I wanted to talk about, so we may as well move on to that now. What is Paul McCartney's attitude towards fashion these days, and how much, uh if at all, does he take it seriously when he goes out on stage?

SPEAKER_00 37:00

Yeah, McCartney does uh spend a lot of time um thinking about what he's going to wear. You know, he's um he's he's he's he's show business of the old school in a way. Uh he he does think about the uh the total show, which includes what he's gonna wear, and um he dresses he dresses very um thoughtfully. I guess he's I guess he's always been uh slightly on the conservative side. He was never a complete out and out hippie in the way that uh say George became for a little while. Um even at the top at the height of the hippie era, Paul would still wear a suit. You know, think about the uh the famous um get back uh sequence which we see in the Let It Be film, you know, when they're all on the rooftop there at Savile Row. And um this is 1969 when everyone else is wearing uh denims, double denims, cheesecloth, uh shoulder length uh, and McCartney's still got this um very sharp um dark um suit. Um and so he was he was pretty sharp then, even and that's remained his kind of default look, um, you know, for for big occasions, and very often on stage as well. He he goes for that uh usually the suit with no tie sort of thing. Um but he does think a lot about clothes, and often I found when I was getting his memories of uh experiences with uh the Beatles, uh his reference points were often visual, you know, he'll remember what he was wearing that on that occasion, so um the the the the the clothes have always been important to him and they remain so I think.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

Yeah, fascinating. Paul, you I'm just curious, how much do you think these original outfits go for these days? Well, you know, the memorabilia of the the Beatles um is very much sought after, but the original suits and the costumes and all that stuff that were worn by the Beatles in the day, they must be astronomical, right?

SPEAKER_00 38:53

It must be. I know that McCartney has got um a personal archive which includes a lot of his old stage um outfits and his Sgt. Pepper costume. Uh I was doing a tour programme once with him. We were talking about clothes a lot, and my uh uh my colleague, my designer, uh she went down to the archive and uh got herself uh photographed wearing the Sgt. Pepper suit. And I remember being sick, I remember being sick with jealousy. I thought, why didn't I do that? You know, but uh I was probably I was probably somewhere else interviewing Paul at the time.

SPEAKER_05 39:24

So uh but I would have nice, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

Uh Yoko Yoko has got um uh an archive at the um uh Dakota building where she keeps um a lot of John's old costumes as well. Don't know what arrangements Ringo has got. I'm sure Olivia uh looks after George's things very carefully as well.

SPEAKER_01 39:43

Yeah, amazing. So, Paul, what's coming up next for you? What are you working on at the moment?

SPEAKER_00 39:48

Well, I'm not uh I'm not doing any writing at the moment. I've the McCartney book has been going into various overseas editions, uh different languages and so on around the world. And uh so I have to get quite closely involved in each new edition of that, and that's been keeping me busy for the last uh two years or so. I guess uh maybe maybe by the end of uh this year uh uh the McCartney business will be more or less uh finished with uh for me. So I'll just sit back and uh think about the next book, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

Excellent. And what about Sir Paul McCartney? What's he up to at the moment?

SPEAKER_00 40:19

Uh there's always always more gigs, always more recording. Um he uh you know, he's still very much he was always the workaholic in the Beatles. He was the one that uh was always pestering everybody to get uh get on to the next thing, you know. Let's uh we can't just sit around uh spending our money for the rest of our lives. We're a band, you know, let's get out and do something. He kind of chivied them all into even that Apple Rooftop thing, that was Paul kind of um um pestering everybody to to do something, you know, even if they wouldn't go on tour again, which secretly he really wanted to do. Um but uh he was always the motivator, the motivator of the group, I think. And he's like that now in his in his solo career. He he he can't really uh he can't relax, there's something uh driving him on.

SPEAKER_01 41:04

Paul Denoyer there. Thank you, Paul, and thank you to Walter Smith for jumping on the podcast this week. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did enjoy it, do tell a friend, do share it, do leave a review. It really will help to quote a famous Beatles song and keep me in a job.