Joe Johnson’s Interview with Mark Hudson - Part 1
Part 2 Part 3

Here are some highlights of my interview with Mark. Listen to Beatle Brunch for more, and check out the upcoming issue of “Beatlology Magazine” for the complete text of my talk with Mark Hudson.
Joe: So what do you think of these festivals?
MARK; well it’s weird because this is probably the biggest one I’ve been involved with and Ringo keeps asking me all the time, (does his Ringo voice): “Hey Mark, what is it like?”, and when I try to describe it to him, he doesn’t really understand it because it’s odd thing. In speaking with all of the Beatles, who I got to know in different periods of my life, part of them is not really aware of the phenomenon, I mean, they know how big they are, they know all that, but they do not realize that the impact of what they’ve done has affected us and our children, and that their music has had that kind of power. So they can’t even believe that people would congregate with a Ringo shirt, to hear stories, that to them, might even seem meaningless. ‘Uh, I had tea with Paul the other day”, and everyone in the audience is going “Ah! Tea with Paul!”, and they’re going, “It was just tea”.

There’s a great story that I have, when Jeff Lynne was making his solo album, my studio had an office above the studio he was recording in, and I have these great vintage guitars, Silvertones and Rickenbackers, and he asked me if he could borrow some. And I had also been given a tape of The Beatles rehearsing, and you hear them laughing, and making mistakes, making fun of each other. It wasn’t like any tape I had heard, and I said, “Jeff, I’ve got this tape of the four lads” and he goes, “Oh, I’d love to have it. Tom Petty’s coming in and Clapton and I’d love to give it to the guys”. So I give him this tape and we listen to it together and I think it was “Can’t Buy Me Love”. George is kind of messing up the solo and John started laughing and they started making fun of each other and you could really see the friendship part of the relationship on this tape. So I give it to Jeff Lynn and he makes a copy for Clapton, for Tom Petty and for George, who were coming into the studio to hear his album. And so a couple of days go by and I come down stairs and I see Jeff and I go, “well, how was it? Did they love the tape?”, and he says, “Well Eric loved it and Tom loved it and then”, he says, “when George was there, I said ‘George, this is a tape of the four boys, you guys rehearsing and stuff and it’s great and I think you’d really have a good time’. And he said that George went, “I don’t want it”, and Jeff said, “Why?”, and George went, “I was there!”

And when he said that to me there was like a moment where it took me back. But I guess for us, we’re like hanging on every little, “Oh there’s John laughing at George and the guitar string broke”, and to them, and even in my conversations with Ringo now, it was “their” life, so they lived it. So as they’re sitting down like we’re sitting down right now, the memory of that is so imbedded, that to look back, it would just be like a different way of viewing it. So just that sort of Harrisonesque, “I was there”, with that growl, was what a great answer. And I think George was just saying, “That was my life”.

JOE: What is your first memory of the Beatles? Were you an Ed Sullivan viewer?
MARK: Oh sure. From the very beginning, I remember being in school and as soon as “it” happened, I could see the energy in the young girls, and I thought, “Wow, I want to be one of those guys”. And every girl in my school just had like this thing going on, and I was really too young and pubescent to know what that “thing” was, but I knew being a young boy, that whatever it was, I wanted it. And then when we finally got to see them on Ed Sullivan, then it was just all over. And my first thing was John. I loved his voice and I like how he stood and he had this thing that I related to. And each brother, my other brothers, my brother Bill related to George because he loved the guitar and my brother Brett kind of looked like McCartney with big lips. And so we all just kind of like grabbed on to them immediately. And it’s very funny, that Ringo was sort of the forgotten Beatle until I became a drummer, and then I said, “Hey, hey that guy!” and I started to (imitates Ringo) “Oh”, and when I started playing the drums, Ringo was my guideline. And still Lennon from the songwriting, singing perspective, but after we saw them live, my brothers and I went crazy. We were standing in front of the mirror with mops and brooms pretending.

JOE; You guys WERE the Beatles!
MARK: Oh, are you kidding? Yeah, minus Ringo. I think my Uncle Cheech was Ringo, but even in those days, the three brothers, were those Beatles and I think my Uncle Cheech, who was like 47, was Ringo, and I was like 9 or 10 or whatever I was. Then they came in concert and my mom got tickets to see them, and that was the end of it for me, because there I was in this place and there was like 11 thousand people, screaming girls beyond belief, people with Beatle wigs and kids with their moms and when they came out, it was the tour when they did “I’m Down” and “Help!” (1965) and all that and John was playing the organ part, and John was having so much fun. They walked on stage and you could see there was a part of them that didn’t care, because you couldn’t hear anything anyway.

JOE: It was old to them by this time.
MARK: They’d already been doing it. They were seasoned vets. But when I saw them live, that’s when I really knew that I just didn’t want to have what they had, I knew that I wanted to try to be that, professional. “(I’d say) OK, I’m getting a guitar, force my mom (Kate Hudson), I’m going to mow lawns until my mom gets me that drum kit. And when I saw them live, that was when I knew that I wanted “it”, that I wanted to be involved in “their” world at any level. And I look at myself now, always looking back to being that kid with my mom, seeing the Beatles on stage, and never in my life did I think I would meet all four of them, just even meet them. Like run into them or wave to them in a limo, let alone hang out with John Lennon during “the lost weekend”, which I got to do with my brothers and Harry Nillson, and then produce Ringo and work with Paul and George on the record and George Martin and Geoff Emerick.

I still say to myself, I’m Italian, and in my family if you work with Sinatra you get credibility, but this to me is like I’ve done it. And even though I might be successful or not successful, in Mark Hudson’s life, it doesn’t get any better than this. I always say I have trouble working with Ringo sometimes because I’m such a fan, and there I am playing my guitar and I turn around and there he is, (in his Ringo voice): “Ah hello”, and it’s him playing the drums and there’s a moment when I always sort of implode, “wait a minute, Mark!” and then I have to go, “No Ringo, that’s wrong”, or “Do it again this way.” I got to be a producer but part of me just wants to go, “let’s just stay here and play all day and teach me stuff.” And he does.

He did the greatest thing to me once because being a drummer, we were two drum kits and I say, “You don’t realize”, he goes, “Come on, let’s go”, and we start playing together, and just that in itself was enough to make my world. And then I say, “You don’t understand something Ringo, I know everything that you’ve done” and he says, “Ah, no you don’t”. I say “Yes I do.” “How about this: (plays drum part with his mouth) bada bah!” That’s the beginning of Birthday! And he kind of looks at me and he goes, “How about this: Bada bada”, and I said, “Well either that’s the beginning of Glass Onion or the middle of Rain”, because I knew every one! He was doing drum fills and I was going, “Dear Prudence”, and I was naming all of his stuff and he kind of looks at me with these wide eyes, takes a pen, signs the sticks and says, “Here! Take ‘em. Just don’t sell them to Sotheby’s. You deserve ‘em, you bastard!” And that was such a huge moment for me because that was sort of letting him know that everything that he’s given me, I’ve remembered. Stuff like that happens to me constantly. I’m on my fourth record with him and he’ll still do something that does that to me.

JOE: You know when you hear Ringo interviews, he sort of downplays the Beatles side of it, but he’s a huge Beatle fan, right?
MARK: Huge! Huge Beatle fan. It’s a weird thing because all of them, once they broke up, ended looking for something. When they broke up, they wanted to be the “x-Beatle” or the “former Fab Four” because they wanted to have the individual qualities. And the cool part about is I think there are fans, including myself, I’ve loved them all individually as much as I’ve loved them collectively, but, they’re The Beatles, and now matter when you see Paul McCartney, you go, “It’s Paul McCartney! The Beatle. It’s Ringo Starr, The Beatle!” And John was so hurt by the whole breakup. If you look at the first album, a lot of his lyrics like “How Do You Sleep” and all of that stuff, it was like a divorce. Remember these kids knew each other since they were 15 years old and when you’re going on a world wind like that, and I can even relate to it on a smaller level as a “Hudson Brother”.

When we hit TV and the cover of “16 Magazine” and girls chasing us and “Hollywood Squares”, it was this thing that was so fast that it’s tough to remember, but it was so powerful, you can never forget it.

There was one time when Paul played on “Vertical Man”, we went to his house, and there I am sitting down having tea with Paul and Ringo and part of me is, I’m mumbling to myself, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home”, because it felt so “Wizard of Oz-like” to me. And there they were talking about each other like we would talk about each other. Paul was about to do “Standing Stone” and he invited me to The Royal Albert Hall. And I got to go and be in his row. I was invited so it really was cool. And he was actually talking about (in Liverpool accent), “Ah, remember how scared John used to be. We used to go on stage he used to throw up all the time.” And he and Ringo were talking to each other like I would be talking about my friend Foot or Vinny, and I’m going “this is so weird”, but to hear them do it that way, you can see, I’m a true believe that these guys loved each other no matter what. And they’ve all said that, that they were friends, through it all, and they were talking on the phone and they were sending cards and notes and even though (people would say), “Oh the Beatles are, ooh Yoko and McCartney, ooh look out there”, through all of that stuff, which happens in any relationship, they loved each other, and I look back at that and I wish the world knew that. Sometimes the press, no pun intended, they tend to take beauty and make less of it, because beauty isn’t as intriguing as a tablespoon of dirt. And that was the beautiful thing about them is you can see that no matter how big they were, they always held on to this, “We’re just four lads from Liverpool”.

…to be continued. Check www.brunchradio.com for more from Mark Hudson! And meet Joe Johnson and Mark Hudson at the “Fest for Beatlesfans” the weekend of August 16th in Chicago.

Interview
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3