Nowhere Boy OST [CD]

I was lucky enough to see this film at the London Film Festival. It's a beautifully told story, and very moving.
It covers a period of John Lennon's life (his teenage years in Liverpool) that I knew nothing about. The music in the film is nothing short of brilliant. It's the best rock & roll from the late fifties, with Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Screaming Jay Hawkins among others. There is also songs from the actors playing 'The Quarrymen' (Lennon & McCartney's first band.)
Buy it if you like rock & roll, if you are a Beatles fan, or if you plan to see the film. You won't regret it!

I haven't seen Sam Taylor-Wood's film yet but this double CD features one CD of music featured in the film (including six tracks by a band playing the Quarrymean -'The Nowhere Boys') plus a second CD of music that influenced the Beatles/the Quarrymen. You could say that the soundtrack is a bit of a mishmash featuring as it does classic rock and roll, R&B, blues and naff 50s British pop, together with the modern recordings by the Nowhere Boys, and while some of these songs (Dicky Valentine) jar a little this is exactly the combination of sounds that the Beatles melded together to produce Merseybeat. However, it would have been nice if some skiffle could have been included to reflect the times and because the Quarrymen were actually a skiffle band.

That said the record does include some all-time classic rock and roll, including arguably the first rock and roll record from 1951 Jackie Brenston's "Rocket 88", Big Mama Thornton's definitive original version of "Hound dog" and Gene Vincent's very influential "Be-Bop-A-Lula".

Nowhere Boy is an emotionally moving biopic about the coming of age years of John Lennon during the time when he first discovered who his real mother was. It also depicts Lennon when he first formed his first band The Quarrymen. The film ends as a teenage Lennon and McCartney set off for Hamburg.

What makes the original soundtrack album so authentic and appealing is selection of songs that makes up the psychological backdrop and tone of Lennon's teenage years. His only escape at the time was rock and roll, and most of the songs on the album reflect the music he was listening to at the time, songs that inspired him to form his first band (The Quarrymen) with McCartney.

There's two distictive sides to the music in the film and on the double CD. Firstly, the selection of original classics of the time sets the tone. And when you first hear these classics in the cinema whilst watching the film, particularly the emotional encounter scene when Lennon first meets his mother, Julia, the high volume assault of Screamin' Jay Hawkins'I Put A Spell On You' is both rivetting and way ahead of its time.

It's also the mainstream songs of the time, that gets you in the mood (Dickie Valentine's Mr Sandman), while the rockin' classics like Jerry Lee Lewis' Wild One, Elvis' Shake, Rattle & Roll, Eddie Cochran's Twenty Flight Rock, and Gene Vincent And The Blue Caps' Be-Bop-A-Lula reminds us how relevant and powerful vintage rock and roll still is to this very day.

What sets the original motion picture soundtrack apart from the majority of other film biopics is the fact that the main actors in the film who portrayed The Quarrymen, actually went into the studio to record around six Quarrymen original songs for the film.

Main actor, Aaron Johnson actually learned how to play the banjo and guitar for his role as the teenage Lennon, so what you end up listening to on the album is The Nowhere Boys (the actors who portrayed The Quarrymen) performing The Quarrymen songs. These include Maggie May, That's Alright Mamma, Raunchy, Movin' and Groovin', and the double A-side single That'll Be The Day and In Spite of All The Danger. Aaron Johnson even performs an acoustic version of The Quarrymen's Hello Little Girl to startling effect.

For authenticity, you also get tracks by more obscure artists of the time, including Big Mamma Thorton's original version of Hound Dog, Wanda Jackson's Hard Headed Woman, Jackie Breston and His Delta Cats' Rocket 88, Eddie Bond and The Stompers' Rockin' Daddy.

The film closes with the confssional Mother, the touching song about John's mother, Julia, that originally appeared on John's first solo album after he formed the Beatles years later. Although Mother is out of context, decade-wise, the inclusion of this highly personal track, runs over the film credits at the end of the film. What you get in the film and on the album is an alternative demo version of Mother, which is different from the version that made it on to John Lennon's debut solo album.

All of the above eighteen tracks appear on Disc 1. However, the double CD also inclues a second disc of music that inspired John Lennon during his teenage years, songs that were popular in the charts at the time, which once again, gives the overall tone of the original soundtrack relevance and authenticity of the music that was popular during the time when Lennon made the transition from a young man searching for his real parents to his transition into a rock and roll star. Fascinating stuff.