A feel-good story in the news is that a guitar stolen from Paul McCartney in an opportunist theft in the 1970s has been returned. When I heard the news I thought “Hofner”, as in conversation with the artist Peter le Vasseur he mentioned including a Hofner in his painting Echoes of Liverpool.
The painting came about as Peter had been dissatisfied with an earlier work In My Life which he’d painted back in 1969. He’d been invited to contribute an artwork for Volume 1 of the book Beatles Illustrated Lyrics by Alan Aldridge whose credits include the cover for Elton John’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. Given only six days to complete the painting he worked day and night, barely sleeping until it was finished. As a result, he always felt he did not have time to do the subject justice.
In My Life was not Peter’s favourite Beatles song, but he picked up elements of the lyrics. ‘There are places I remember…’ gave him the idea that traditional Liverpool was being knocked down. Chiming with the lyrics ‘Friends and Lovers … things that went before’ Peter included two women he knew at the time; one stands beside Lennon, and another reclines at bottom right. Ironically, when interviewed about the painting he couldn’t remember the women’s names. “It was the sixties,” he chuckled.
The original was sold after the book was published; it is thought to have been bought by Ringo Starr who eventually owned a number of Le Vasseur paintings.
Peter’s main regret was that, due to the pressure of time, he had not included any instruments, so revisited the theme in 2000 with Echoes of Liverpool. This time, Ringo Starr holds drumsticks, John Lennon has a Rickenbacker 325 guitar, George Harrison has an Epiphone Casino and Paul McCartney the violin-shaped Hofner he played left-handed.
He added his wife Linda, portrayed as she was at seventeen years old, plus his first fiancée who had died tragically young, echoing the line in the song about some friends being dead. The old lady is Peter’s grandmother as she looked in the 1960s. Typical of Peter’s style he fills the background with details symbolising Liverpool in a time of change, and scattered products and images recalling ordinary life in the sixties. He also took the time to achieve more transition between the background and foreground, where he painted flowers in the wasteland to show the Beatles are emerging from grimy towns into a brighter future.
A Brush With Life, the Art of Peter Le Vasseur, is published by Lutterworth Press. It can be ordered from brick-and mortar bookshops and online in both the UK and now in the USA.
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