Mixing Beatles and Politics (Beatles related)

Thought I would share this little bit of political history with you. It's not completely Beatles related but it's close enough for the forum, I thought.

Last month I was chatting away with my father about political history in New Zealand (random, I know but that's where he happened to grow up!) and he said that when the (then) Prime Minister Jim Bolger was touring a tour around the country, he visited a rural school. Story sounds nice enough so far. The school children sung a song to greet him, as they usually do but it ended up being The Beatles "Nowhere Man"... He said it was a hilarious to see it on TV. I'm sure the kids (or teachers for that matter), didn't realise the subtext behind it - but it certainly left him rather offended!

The story he told took me back to when I was at school, singing Beatles songs during assemblies and school concerts. More the hits they sung in their early days though. Ahhhh those were the days :) I'm not sure if any of you sung Beatles songs at school or if any of you that have children at school that do too.

In 8th grade, we sang "Yesterday" and "Hey Jude" I believe. And in HS gym class, we once did exercises to "Do You Want To Hear A Secret" ? Cute story, but maybe the teacher should have picked another song, I can understand how the Prime Minister was offended.

Haha yeah, apparently it was all the rage on the media.

Yeah, I fondly remember having to sing a Beatles medley for a school production. Friends of mine had to sing Octopus's Garden which I think is quite sweet.

Do you think that schools have to buy the rights to play pop songs to children? That's made me wonder lately as I was away on a conference in Madrid about copyrights and intellectual property...I guess not if they were playing them with musical instruments.

I'm not sure if they have to buy the rights, but our gym teacher played records. In grammar school, we sang from books or music sheets. I also recall in college, my English textbook had "Eleanor Rigby" in it as a poem. The instructor felt the song could apply to homeless people in the 80's. Looking back, I recall in kidergarten singing "Yellow Submarine"