I Am Not The Beatles

Growing up in a small town in England, I was in love with music with one pound pocket money a week. This pound was not quite enough to buy myself a hit 7″ single.

However, the only record shop in town had a magnificent desperate money making ruse. All the singles that had totally failed to chart were savagely wrapped in cling film, forced into plain brown paper bags as if they were some strange kind of porn, and sold in anonymous packs of 12 for a rather magic figure : one pound.

I had no idea what they contained, indeed this was part of the fun, I quickly amassed hundreds of ‘failed records’ very very cheaply and these records became the sound of my youth.

It struck me recently that I hadn’t heard them for many years and a strange melancholy hit me. Were they always destined to fail? Where are these people now? How might things have been different for their creators?

And, just as importantly, does my initial outlay of just 8 pence per record mean I may now actually be in profit if I tried to sell them?

So, here they are in all their glory : The mad, the bad and the brilliant.

These are not the also rans of the Eighties, but the didn’t runs. It is a strange much untravelled land containing place names like : Georgio, Alan Darby, A Girl Called Johnny, President, Jean Beauvoir, The Glass Beat Game, The Lift.

These are the hits that never were. Records that can’t be forgotten as they were never remembered in the first place.

And here they proudly stand, at last reaching an audience larger than just me.

They are not The Beatles.

If this is your first visit to I Am Not The Beatles, it is recommended that you now read The Rules - or it is very possible none of this will make any sense.