#Aspinall**

[gardenwalrus]

The Beatles photographed by Shahrokh Hatami, 21 December 1963

[sandmandaddy69]

Marc Aspinall

[tavolgisvist]

I was always interested in finding out what have happens on the photo. What gave them the idea of depict Paul's funeral: why the funeral, why Paul? Well…I have an answer, I suppose

More legendary than most, however, were a band briefly signed to Brian, the Big Three. Other musicians on the scene seemed to regard this band with awe. They were the original power trio, real sonic bruisers who’d built themselves the biggest amplifiers - nicknamed Coffins - that anyone had ever seen.

(Liverpool - Wondrous Place by Paul Du Noyer, 2002)

Epstein made his way to the Cavern club to see the group perform at a lunchtime session on November 9th. He wrote later that he had never seen anything like The Beatles on any stage. <…> "I loved their ad libs and I was fascinated by this, to me, new music with its pounding bass beat and its vast, engulfing sound." <…> The "pounding" bass that Epstein described was due in part to a new addition to The Beatles' equipment line-up. In the early 1960s there was really no such thing as a proper bass amplifier. Most bass players would use the most powerful guitar amplifier that they could get their hands on. But these were not designed for bass guitar, and did not provide the deep, throbbing bass tones that bass guitarists wanted. As The Beatles evolved their sound and Best perfected his "atomic beat" the group were searching for a stronger and more solid bass sound.

The band considered by many to be the loudest and most aggressive in Liverpool was The Big Three. They bad started out as Cass & The Cassanovas, a four-piece until leader and frontman Brian Casser left during the beginning of 1961. The remaining members stayed together to form The Big Three: Johnny Gustafson on bass, guitarist Adrian Barber, and Liverpool's loudest drummer, Johnny Hutchinson, on the skins.

Barber says that when they became a trio there was an instant problem: he and Gustafson weren't loud enough to project over Hutchinson's drumming. Even the relatively punchy Selmer Truvoice amp was not enough. Barber, however, had an interest in electronics from his days in the merchant navy. <…> Barber went out and bought a book about loudspeakers produced by G A Briggs, who owned the British Wharfedale speaker company, and inside he found construction details for various sizes of cabinets. "I decided on one, and Denis Kealing said he could get me a 15-inch speaker," recalls Barber. "I built a set-up for the bass guitar and for the vocal, in a cabinet about five feet tall by about 18 inches square. <…> I used that and mounted it in a metal ammunitions case, so we could carry it around without killing it. Johnny Gustafson used it as his bass amp, and it was very successful. "When we carried it we bad to lower it on its side, because it was long and skinny. The first time we took it down to the Cavern, we struggled down the tiny stairs there. As we carried this black-painted thing across the room it looked just like a coffin - and that's how it got its name: the Coffin. Now, the Cavern was the underground basement of a warehouse, with three vaulted brick-built archways. Over the years water had seeped down and brought calcium deposits with it, which had settled in the ceiling bricks. So when Johnny plucked that first bass note it was like a shower of snow corning down. People went, 'Wow look at that … and listen to that.' So we were really impressed, and I got ambitious at that point." <…> Other bands began to notice the relative sophistication of The Big Three's amplification, especially the bass gear. "Liverpool wasn't a competitive scene, before it got commercial," explains Barber. '"All the bands co-operated with one another and backed each other up. It was a cool scene, and I started to build these things for other people. Paul McCartney asked me to make him a Coffin. It had a single 15-inch speaker in a reflex-ported cabinet, with two chrome handles and wheels on the side."

McCartney started to use a Barber Coffin speaker cabinet during the late part of 1961. <…> McCartney himself recalls, "Adrian made me a great bass amp that he called the Coffin. And, man! Suddenly that was a total other world. That was bass as we know it now. It was like reggae bass: it was just too right there. It was great live." Pete Best too remembers the Coffin. "Neil Aspinall and I used to carry it. Every couple of shows there'd be a flight of stairs which you had to carry this thing up, and it was then we'd wonder why he couldn't have got something smaller. We'd have sweat streaming off us. But the beauty of it was, with all the laughing and joking aside, it did produce a great sound. The first time Paul plugged it in and used it, we just said my god, this is incredible. It added to The Beatles sound."

(Beatles Gear: All the Fab Four's Instruments from Stage to Studio Hardcover by Andy Babiuk, 2010)

So, I guess, Paul is lying on his bass amp that they called the Coffin - and it's the reason of the pantomime on the photo.

[ceofjohnlennon]

Contact sheets of John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Neil Aspinall, August 18, 1965, taken by Robert Freeman.

[bonithica-art]

what if the bugs were ponies

[theactioneer]

Marc Aspinall Escape From New York soundtrack art (2020)

[soranatus]

Green Arrow (2023) #21 variant cover by Marc Aspinall

[browsethestacks]

The Bat-Man: First Knight #02 (2024)

Art by Marc Aspinall

[muzaktomyears]

Paul once reminded me, 'Don't forget, you're not very good, any of you, you know that, don't you?' I had forgotten, I had. It had gotten to the point where I was really believing in myself, you know, really having a good time being me. Apple was in its (comparatively) early days. I had been back from America three months, this was summer 1968. It was design time for stationery and advertisements and logos, we were building our image by being and that was trouble, being. Being was sticking your neck out and getting bites all over it. I don't think I ever hated anyone as much as I hated Paul in the summer of 1968. Postcards would arrive at my house from America or Scotland or wherever, some outright nasty ones, some with no meaning that I could see, one with a postage stamp torn in half and pasted neatly showing the gap between the two halves. Joan received one bearing the words: 'Tell your boy to obey the schoolmasters,' and signed: 'Patron.' Far out. Lots of people were getting postcards in those days; Christ, you know it wasn't easy. These were the days long before Klein came into town. These were the days when Neil Aspinall as Managing Director would come into my room in Apple in the middle of the day and collapse on the sofa and sit, staring and staring. He tells me now it was fear. I knew then it was fear. We were all frightened. We were frightened of Them and we were frightened of each other and we were frightened of the press. At about this time Paul wrote 'Hey Jude'. Remember: make a sad song better.

As Time Goes By, Derek Taylor (1973)

[pixalry]

The Batman: First Knight - Created by Marc Aspinall

You can follow the artist on Instagram.

[tavolgisvist]

[ludmilachaibemachado]

Via Something About the Beatles' Girls FB🎍🌹🎍

[crisisofinfinitemultiverses]

Spectacular Spider-Men 5 (2024) variant by Marc Aspinall

[johnny-dynamo]

Spider-Gwen by Mark Aspinall