Fab 4 furore with Sir Cliff
QUESTION
Did Cliff Richard once accuse The Beatles of playing out-of-tune guitars? CLIFF Richard made some remarkable accusations in a 2008 Q Magazine interview.
After praising The Beatles for being an ‘incredible force’, he went on to criticise them because ‘even now, when I listen to them, some of the guitar is so out of tune, it’s unbelievable’.
‘I couldn’t believe that here they were in this high-tech age, with four-track recording machines, and they couldn’t go back and do it with a tuned guitar.’
Of course, the million-dollar question is which songs offended him most. Unfortunately, he could not remember! But lead guitarist George Harrison came in for special criticism: ‘It’s mostly their guitar solos, which can be fairly horrific,’ Cliff added.
Perhaps it was sour grapes. ‘My only gripe is when critics writing the history of rock ’n’ roll leave me out altogether,’ he continued.
There is evidence of a few Beatles tracks being out of tune. Engineer Geoff Emerick tells in his book Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording The Music Of the Beatles, how, in the days of analogue recording, keeping a tape recording at concert pitch wasn’t always a certainty.
The engineers would use Varispeed technology to speed up or slow down the tapes for various reasons. For instance, Paul McCartney specifically requested that When I’m Sixty-Four be slightly sped up to make his voice sound younger, with the result that this song in the key of C plays back on the album a half-step higher, in the key of D flat.
Other songs where the speed of the recording affects the pitch include I’m Only Sleeping, Yellow Submarine, Lovely Rita, I’ll Get You and Across The Universe. Karl Smith, Warwick.
QUESTION
A World War II documentary stated that during the Battle of the Bulge 6,000 American soldiers were captured by the Germans. What happened to them? ONCE a member of the armed forces is taken prisoner, he comes under the protection of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war (PoWs), provid ing his captors have signed the convention.
The prisoner is entitled to be protected from further harm. They must be provided with food, clothing and accommodation and the prisoner must be treated humanely.
PoWs may not be forced to work for their captors, but they may undertake work on a voluntary basis to alleviate boredom or to improve their own circumstances, such as growing vegetables to supplement their diet.
In general, the American soldiers taken during the Battle of the Bulge were treated no differently from any other military captured by the Germans.
In the first instance, the prisoners would have been taken to a temporary camp out of artillery range. Here they were interrogated to see what military intelligence they might give up.
Prisoners were not, generally speaking, tortured for information. The Geneva Convention requires a prisoner to give only his service number, his name and his rank, so that the Red Cross may be notified of his capture and they, in turn, can notify the prisoner’s government.
After that,the PoWs would have been sent by road and rail to a regular PoW camp. These were mainly in Germany, Austria and Poland.
During the Battle of the Bulge, 84 American prisoners were shot by their captors at Malmedy, under SS Sturmbannführer Joachim Peiper. He was later be tried as a war criminal, but served only ten years in prison.
There was also a massacre of 11 black soldiers of the US 333rd Field Artillery Battalion at Wereth, a hamlet in Belgium. No one ever stood trial for that atrocity.
The Battle of the Bulge was not just an American battle. The British 2nd Army were also involved and suffered 1,400 casualties, of which more than 200 were killed another 200 were listed as missing, presumably becoming PoWs.
Bob Dillon, Edinburgh.
QUESTION
Who invented the first electronic hearing aid? THE invention of the telephone, combined with the practical application of electricity in the 19th century, enabled the development of hearing-aid technology.
People with hearing loss realised they could hear a conversation better through the telephone receiver held up to their ear than they could in person.
In 1870, Thomas Edison invented a carbon transmitter for the telephone which amplified the electrical signal and increased the decibel level by about 15 decibels (dB), however a hard-of-hearing person needed at least 30dB.
The first electronic hearing aid was the Akouphone, invented by Alabama engineer Miller Reese Hutchison (1876-1944) in 1898. The Akouphone took the carbon transmitter to convert weak audio signals into stronger ones via electric signals.
The press called the device a ‘miracle’, and Queen Alexandra was so fond of hers that she invited Hutchison to the coronation of her husband Edward VII in 1902.
Beginning in the 1920s, hearing aids using vacuum tubes were able to increase the sound level by as much as 70dB.
The first vacuum-tube hearing aid was patented by engineer Earl Hanson in 1920. Called the Vactuphone, it used the telephone transmitter to turn speech into electrical signals. It weighed 7lb. Karen Newman, Denbighshire.
QUESTION
Have any other bands kept the same line-up for as long as U2 have? FURTHER to earlier answers, U2’s record is truly amazing; since the band was founded in 1978, 40 years ago, it has keep exactly the same lineup, Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. Undoubtedly, the longest surviving American band is ZZ Top, which was formed in Texas in 1969. Three of the players who were in at the start are still playing with the band, frontmen Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard (who doesn’t actually have a beard!). But three other founding members in 1969 subsequently left. David Power, Dublin 7.
O IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Irish Daily Mail, Embassy House, Herbert Park Lane, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. You can also fax them to 0044 1952 510906 or you can email them to charles.legge@dailymail.ie. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.