John Lennon’s Beatles’ Influences Revealed In PBS Special

New PBS special, debuting September 8, takes a look back at how American soul and rock music influenced John Lennon and the pre-Ringo Beatles, with Pete Best at right. Photofest It’s been called rock’s equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1989, a Bris-tol music promoter purchased at auction an old Discomatic jukebox once owned by John Lennon in the 1960s. Its track list, written in Lennon’s own hasty handwriting, cataloged 41 re-markable discs of American soul, R&B and rock ‘n’ roll — a collection of 45s that shaped his musical education and became the musical style-bible from which the Beatles sound derived.

Thirteen/WNET New York’s GREAT PERFORMANCES celebrates the box and its contents in John Lennon’s Jukebox, a delightful new documentary tracking down Lennon’s early mu-sical heroes on September 8 at 8 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings).

Along the way, viewers are treated to visits with The Isley Brothers, Ritchie Barrett, blues guitarist Bobby Parker and Delbert McClinton. Also on hand are Gary “U.S.” Bonds, Bruce Channel, Fontella Bass, John Sebastian of The Lovin’ Spoonful, Donovan, Steve Cropper of Booker T. & The MGs, legendary songwriters Leiber & Stoller, and Sting.

Lennon himself “narrates” the telecast, via archival radio interviews. “In the early days, I would often write a melody, a lyric in my head to some other song because I can’t write mu-sic,” he explains early in the program. “I would carry it around as somebody else’s song and then change it when putting it down on paper, or down on tape - consciously change it because I knew somebody’s going to sue me or everybody’s going to say ‘what a rip off’...”

The telecast participants are surprisingly amiable about the appropriation of much of their music - indeed, apparently flattered to be included in Len-non’s early pantheon. No secret were the direct lifts of the screaming and hollering heard in The Isley Brothers’ version of “Twist and Shout.” “The ‘Oooooo’ was taken from The Isley Brothers, which we stuck in everything,” Lennon acknowledges. “‘From Me to You,’ ‘She Loves’...they all had that.”

“The Beatles were doing us,” The Isleys remark in the telecast. “They wanted to be us.”

An extra delight in the program is impromptu performances by many of the contributors. Among them: Parker, Sebastian, Donovan, McClinton, and Bass, the only woman on the jukebox. Still going strong, Bass treats viewers to a brief reprise of her memorable 1965 hit, “Rescue Me.”

Perhaps the most interesting insight of the special is the last. Says Lennon: “I don’t remember the chords or the lyrics, anything of The Beatles’ stuff. I still go back to the stuff The Beatles performed before they wrote. All I wanted to do was sing a bit of rock ‘n’ roll and not be responsible and sing ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula.’” Fittingly, it is that Gene Vincent hit that the jukebox’s assembler sings over the closing credits.

An Initial production in association with Channel 4 International, John Lennon’s Jukebox is produced and directed by Christopher Walker.