Recording is still a new experience for me. Sometimes I have a feeling that I´m making up for the lost time I missed up untill my forties. This of course doesn’t mean that I should have recorded The Beatles 20 years ago. At that time, I had a different view on music and my singing, even though it’s true that „Got to get you into my life“ appeared on my first LP „Moanin’ (Opus, 1984). And even before that we tasted a bit of fame with my band Blues five and the song „A day in the life“ in 1968. But for me, the inspiration for covering Beatles tracks was still the eternal and genius version of With a little help of my friends by Joe Cocker and his Grease band. Maybe since than, while looking at every new CD cover, I always notice the song titles and try to search the back of my mind for the ones that I recognize, because remakes as they call them today, amuse me. I love it when I can listen to a popular song in an absolutely new version. Than I can try to investigate what that particular musician did to the song in order to express his musical opinion. Actually, I believe that with this sort of remake an author reveals more about his musical „guts“ then when he
presents his own new idea. Jazz musicians, for as long as I remember, played standards, and for example, when they were succesful in creating a new melody on an already established tune, they had no problem declaring it as their own. Well, I don’t have this type of ambitions now, eventhough some of the songs I recorded have changed beyond recognition. But that’s not what’s important here. What´s important for me, is that from the first moment I „met up“ with the Beatles tunes, I found musical material in them that has unrepeatable simplicity, ease, catchy singing melodies, boyhood, carelessness and naturalness. So, that´s the reason why I have loved The Beatles for almost 40 years and why I decided to record them. (Peter Lipa)