beatlefan@mindspring.comnote: This is one of dozens of exclusive interviews conducted by Hieronimus with the creators of Yellow Submarine in preparation for his forthcoming historical book on the subject.
After being bowled over by “The Beatles Yellow Submarine” film in November 1968, like many of you I was curious who were the creators behind such lavish color and innovative design. I determined that I would someday learn who was responsible for what I considered an animated masterpiece, and how it came about. Thirty years later, I have finally realized this goal.
These last 10 years have been especially rewarding with my quest, and after repeated interviews with over two dozen of the film’s co-creators, I can safely say that much of the information currently in print regarding Yellow Submarine is misleading or outright fantasy.
To understand how Yellow Submarine came to be, one first has to appreciate that this film NEVER HAD A FINISHED SCRIPT. Instead, the artists worked with fragments of multiple scripts by numerous authors (over 40 according to Erich Segal), combined with the input of the Animation Directors, Key Animators, Animators, Background Artists, and anyone else who had a good idea. Although it gave me, and probably many of you, the impression of a coherent, purposeful story loaded with hidden meanings and possible symbolic interpretations, this landmark film literally evolved as it was co-created, and is the combined input of dozens of multi-talented artists.
Holding the chaos together and acting as a driving force during the 11 months of production was the music of The Beatles. Their example inspired the 200-plus artists to create a visionary work that would be worthy of The Beatles and perhaps become as timeless as their music. I am not alone when I say Yellow Submarine succeeded in capturing the essential message of the Beatles: we are one people on one planet, united by love!
The second key to understanding the success of Yellow Submarine is to know the powerful influence of its Artistic Director, Heinz Edelmann. Rightly regarded as one of the world’s major contemporary graphic artists, Czech-born Edelmann’s characteristic visual language sets him above transient trends and fashions. He is internationally renowned for his posters and illustrations, his book design and typography, his comic strips and cartoon animation. Although Edelmann is praised as the genius behind the film by all the other co-creators, he does not consider the Yellow Submarine as his finest hour. Far from it, in fact; he usually refuses to discuss the Yellow Submarine, saying in our first interview over five years ago, it has become like “an albatross around my neck.” In recent weeks we even received a call from The Beatles’ company, Apple Corps., who wanted to talk to Edelmann for the Yellow Submarine section in the Anthology book, but even THEY knew they might strike out without a personal introduction.
Originally hired for a two month period to create the designs for Yellow Submarine, Edelmann ended up working around the clock for the entire 11 month ordeal. Because of lack of direction, and the enormous deadline pressure (the producers reserved the July 17, 1968 date for the debut at The London Pavillion before the production was finished--and there was no turning back) Edelmann took on a schedule of sleeping for only four hours every other day. His health took a terrible beating, he suffered through a bought of food poisoning and almost lost his eyesight. Taking almost two years to recover his health from the project, Yellow Submarine understandably left a very bad taste in his mouth. As he said at the end of a Yellow Submarine chronicle he wrote for us recently:
“Let anyone who mentions “Yellow Submarine” in my hearing after this be flattened into a carpet by a bolt of lightning and eaten by moths!”
I began our exclusive interviews with Edelmann in 1993 and have excerpted part of that interview here to demonstrate some of the wondrous bits of the film’s history that have fallen into the Sea of Holes.
HOW EDELMANN WAS HIRED
Edelmann: At that time I was a graphic designer working in Germany, and known in professional circles for my poster work. I also did contribute, as a regular illustrator, for a magazine that was, at its time, known for its avant garde designer illustration work [“Twen”]. And this was looked at or read abroad. And somebody on the Submarine team happened to be familiar with my work and just called me up.
...That was Charlie Jenkins, the Art Director in charge of the Special Effects who doesn’t get mentioned nowadays. He was responsible for many of the more interesting parts, like the Eleanor Rigby sequence, which we worked out together.
Hieronimus: Now, I’m aware that you probably are a little embarrassed at my calling it a cultural masterpiece, and that kind of thing, and I apologize for that. But to us and to many Americans, it IS a masterpiece. So, if you can live with that tag, I’d appreciate it.
Edelmann: Thank you, I mean that’s a great compliment. But you know, as a working artist and illustrator, one should not think in those terms. As Picasso once said, “an artist stops being an artist the moment he becomes the connoisseur of his own art.” You know, I never think about what I do afterwards. The moment it’s out of the studio, it’s delivered and printed, I forget it, and I rarely look back at my work. And I never sign my work either.
WHAT ABOUT THE SCRIPT?
Hieronimus: Please tell us what kind of script or direction you were given before you started designing the characters and scenes?
Edelmann: Well, one has to go back a bit in history. It is not very well known now, but Submarine was not the first animated Beatle film. The same producers did about seventy 5-minute films, each built around one song with three minutes of mild domestic comedy around it. They were produced all over the world, as far as I know, in the East, in Japan, but mostly in England, where animation was available at reasonable prices. And so TV-C, the company who produced the Submarine, TV-C of London, who did most of the other shorts, were commissioned to do the feature film which would sort of be the crux of the series. And the series was of course conceived and written in the quite early days, when The Beatles were still very much connected with Liverpool.... All the action in the shorts was a sort of local domestic comedy. And the original script followed along the same lines. [But] by ‘67 The Beatles had evolved into something quite different. So we all felt the original script did not do justice to what The Beatles had become. I, myself -- of course, I DID know the Beatles, who didn’t? And I was familiar with the music -- but at that time I was in my first Miles Davis period. But, what I DID enjoy were John Lennon’s books.
... And I felt the script we were supposed to be working with did not do justice to what the Beatles were actually becoming. So, you know, from the original script I think [just] two names were kept. The name of “Old Fred”... this was sort of a maritime story, and one obviously had to have some crusty old salt. And then the name of “The Boob” character... There was a list of the music that should be in the film, and it was determined that “Nowhere Man” would be in the film, and that the “Nowhere Man” should be called the “Boob”.... At that time he was just called the “Boob”... without any first name.... And this is what survived from the first script.
SCRIPTS GOT WEIRDER AND WEIRDER
“And the several versions of the script got weirder and weirder. There was one which concentrated on the marital problems of Mr. and Mrs. Old Fred in which THE SUBMARINE ONLY APPEARED AS A SHIP IN A BOTTLE. It did get weirder and weirder. As production time drew close [to] the final presentation, I was given the brief to do Davy Jones, and to illustrate Davy Jones in Davy Jones’s Locker together with some mermaids. This was on a Friday afternoon when everybody else went away for the weekend, which was, at that time, religiously observed in London. And there I was, sort of feeling depressed, and I was supposed to have one assistant coming on Saturday to help me on the coloring work.
Now, of course, I was not very happy with doing a Davy Jones. And also, I’ve never done a drawing of a mermaid in my life, and I hope to go to my grave without ever doing one. So I was working Friday night ‘til Saturday and feeling frustrated and just wanted to go back home. And just as a point of professional pride, I did not want to leave and to resign without at least having proposed something else... Between the Animation Directors, we had been discussing a sort of, roughly, a story of villains... you know, the normal classic formula of such a film. And then I just sat down and thought, well, obviously I couldn't do Davy Jones, and I didn't want to do any mermaids. So I thought, “what would I like to draw?” I built a sort of outline around that and developed the characters.
HOW THE BLUE MEANIES WERE BORN
Hieronimus: This is really fascinating, Heinz! Because from this standpoint, to a degree, you actually were creating the story for the script!
Edelmann: Well, obviously the Liverpool domestic situation did not apply anymore. And if the film was to be about The Beatles and a submarine, it either could be a submarine mysteriously appearing in Liverpool, which would have made it a latter day Captain Nemo story. [But] of course, the lyrics went against that, because [they] explicitly say “in OUR Yellow Submarine”, not in somebody else’s Yellow Submarine. So the idea was to have The Beatles in the submarine. But four Captain Nemos seemed to be a bit much... the conning tower would have become pretty crowded! So I thought the obvious solution would be to have the submarine belonging to a third party.
...What would be interesting was not the submarine, I thought, itself, but the way from point A to point B, and also what’s going to happen when they arrive. And for this, well, I'll just draw up all the surrealistic villains which I could think of.... In ‘68 this was, more or less, the end of the cold war. Even in the Bond movies they gave up the KGB as the enemy and turned to self employed villains. So, one had in ‘67, one had the feeling that the cold war’s over, that Russia is changing. But also our world is changing with new values... with A NEW VISION OF THE WORLD IN WHICH THE BEATLES PLAYED AN IMPORTANT PART. So, the Meanies, in a way to me, represented a symbolic version of the cold war.
Originally they were the Red Meanies... and only because the assistant who came in to do the coloring, either did not quite understand my instructions, or deliberately did not understand them (but it also could be we didn’t have enough red paint in the place) [that] they became the Blue Meanies.
...This is how the philosophy... knocking out these things as quickly as I had to do, I know that part of my subconscious could go into these things. But I chose to disregard that, I simply did not want to know what’s happening. I mean, otherwise, I couldn’t have done the work. I simply chose not to know what subconscious influences and things went into the work. And in a way, after this outline was later fleshed out by other people, like Erich Segal, in a way, THIS BECAME A SORT OF RESERVOIR OF THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS AT THE POINT OF THE FLOWER POWER REVOLUTION.
MOST CHAOTIC FILM IN HISTORY
...You know, the production was one of the most chaotic in the entire history of film. And the sequence of work was not as in live action movies, this was not starting on scene one and working all the way through the film. We did start off with a test which was later included in the film at the very end -- the tiny piece with George Harrison. This was a preliminary test, and then we started improvising. We started improvising the travel sequence. From after the main title, going on to Pepperland without really [a script] at that time. The script was written and the outline was fleshed out as we went along. So the film, at least twenty minutes of the film were finished in rough form, before we knew what the plot was going to be exactly . And revisions were still made right up to the end with some part of the original Sgt. Pepper’s Land which came in very late in the movie, which, to my mind, does not sit very well with the rest of the story.... The main sequences are: the trip to Pepperland, which was more or less improvised on the basis of the characters. I did without any script [for] the Sea of Monsters. And Charlie Jenkins’ contribution made the Liverpool scene, and the psychedelic scene right at the end. George Dunning, the main director’s contribution was the Lucy in the Sky sequence, which was done in quite another technique, painted directly onto cell traced off from live action. The sort of pure plot part, with the Meanies at the beginning and the big battle scenes at the end, these were all done as the last thing, more or less, in the film.
...At the end, the production was closed down, and people working on the film went off, and it was discovered that the film did not have a proper ending. So the psychedelic end sequence was put together by the four of us using existing artwork, over a weekend again.... I mean it, that’s the way it is. One would have liked to be consciously linked to be the author of a great masterpiece, but in a way, as the old pilots used to say, this was one I walked away from.
HOW TO WORK WITH 200 ARTISTS
Hieronimus: When we talked to Bob Balser and John Coates, they told us nearly 200 artists of all kinds were involved in this project. That’s an astounding figure!
Edelmann: But these were animators and tracers and painters, and motion cell painters. The actual number who did the actual designing [was much smaller]. What I did was do all the characters and that basic look for each sequence. And the rest was then expanded. Like I did maybe 25 of the Pepper people and those grey people in the background, and then somebody else came in and did the other two hundred. The main background artists were two assistants who then expanded my key sketches to the full background. And somebody who did the other characters as well. I think there may have been seven or eight people involved in the actual designing and inventing. The rest were animators, trace and paint artists.
Hieronimus: Ah, now that makes sense. Now, how did you direct the artists? You said you did the master drawings, and they looked at them, and you talked to them about what you thought it should be, or what?
Edelmann: Well, you know they were mostly present, and I, like the school master that I basically am, I just watched over the whole thing. I’d sneak around at night and check up on the work of the animators and leave rude notes if they lost the original design.
Hieronimus: Did that happen often?
Edelmann: Well, it could happen because these were people who were brought in [art students]. We started with about 20 and over 200 were there at the end of the production. We were behind schedule and, of course, being rushed all the time.
Hieronimus: I understand you worked kind of like around the clock. You brought in shifts of artists at night, when others went home?
Edelmann: I was there around the clock.... For about eight months or seven months, I did get about four hours of sleep every second night. It took me years to recover from that.
MEET THE BEATLES FOR LUNCH
Hieronimus: During the production of the film, did you ever meet or talk with The Beatles to get their feedback?
Edelmann: Yes, we did. As much as... there wasn’t much chance, because it should be remembered at that time the Maha Rishi thing began. And they were in India most of, I think anyway, most in early ‘68. [They] only came back when the film was close to completion. And before that, The Beatles were involved in their own Magical Mystery Tour. [But] I did get to meet them. I was invited to the cutting room while they were actually cutting the Magical Mystery Tour.
Hieronimus: Well, did they give you any feedback on the Yellow Submarine?
Edelmann: Well, not really. We had a few discussions, but at early stages, because, as I said, then they went off to do their own Magical Mystery Tour and after that to India. So they were not really in London for most of the production... [When] I did get to meet them... while they were actually cutting Magical Mystery Tour, there was one memory I really treasure, because it’s so much like an old-time musical. Soho at that time -- Soho is now completely different, as the home of the advertising and film industry -- but at that time it was a bit run down [and] most of the cutting rooms were in Soho. But, more or less, along some streets, there were only strip clubs. One of the Animation Directors and I went to see The Beatles, we were invited to join them at the cutting room. And afterwards we had lunch together. And then, when we parted... there was nobody else on the street, just what you would call the people at the entrances of the strip clubs, the barkers or whatever, at the entrances, and we said hello. And we went one way, The Beatles went the other way; everybody was waving. And then there was a pretty strange, but gentle, old gentleman who had roses behind his ears and a watertap glued to his forehead. And he was dancing in the crossroads. And we waved, The Beatles waved and all the people from the strip clubs waved.
Hieronimus: Boy, roses behind his ears, you know what that makes me think of, Heinz? Near the end of the movie, you have the Blue Meanies sprouting roses from their bodies...
Edelmann: That could have been inspired by that! I mean this was somebody who was a well-known eccentric around Soho, who, somehow, hung around The Beatles... at least they knew him. He didn’t just happen to be there. He knew that The Beatles were around.... It was at 3:00 when the restaurants closed. This was at 3:00 in the afternoon, but there was nobody else in the street because just the people from the strip clubs, The Beatles, and us, and this strange old gentleman.
Hieronimus: Could I ask you about when you went to lunch, what did you guys eat? Was this a fish and chips type of place?
Edelmann: You know, at that time, Soho -- which all has disappeared completely; there are no posh restaurants -- but at that time there were a few weirdo places. And this was one, which, of course, has long ago disappeared which was done to the latest London underground chic. What they did at that time, was sort of digging holes into the floor and you sat sort of below ground with just your head in a sort of burrow with just your head sticking out beyond the carpet. It was one of those places.
Hieronimus: That reminds me of the Sea of Holes. That’s very fascinating!
Edelmann: At that time, this was the hottest thing in British interior design. You had that in some of the trends. Well, not a good one, this was Soho. The food was pathetic. This was just to give some flair to the place.
Hieronimus: Probably not a very expensive way of giving it a flair, huh Heinz? Just dig some holes and stick your head out of it.
DOORS OF PERCEPTION
Edelmann: Well, we did. As far as I remember, I mostly spoke with John Lennon. And we did, at some length, discuss Huxley’s Doors of Perception.
Hieronimus: Doors of Perception, an important work. I remember the first time I read that, Heinz. At first I couldn’t quite understand what they were talking about, until, of course, after I experienced some of the magic mushrooms, so to speak. Then it became obvious to me that there were all kinds of worlds going on that I wasn’t conscious of before hand. I mean it is overwhelming. Of course, The Beatles were known to have ingested a few mushrooms in their time, and they make no apologies about that, and I don’t see why they should. Because it certainly gave them a perspective of the fact that we are one people on one planet. I think that's important to remember.
I’d like to return now to one aspect of the movie’s design that I find very moving -- the colors. There has been some research in the past 20 years supporting the theory that color can affect consciousness. The colors in the Yellow Submarine production are just exhilarating, they're uplifting. Was there any conscious choice in the palette to reflect that philosophy?
Edelmann: Well, more or less, of course. This is the American influence. These were Dr. Martin’s Dyes, which at that time were not available in England. I had to bring them in by suitcase from Germany. They just had been introduced.... [They] were well known later on, I mean they were very strong. They were liquid water colors, but highly concentrated.... I suppose they still exist.... They were also later on used for the psychedelic slide shows people used to do, by putting Dr. Martin’s between two sheets of glass with some water. This was a sort of fashion that I hadn't seen, but I read about it. This, I suppose, was fashionable in America.
...Well, what I did, this was to some extent done consciously. Because for one thing, I knew that the story line, as the production went, the story line would not stand up to close scrutiny. And also the animation was not quite what it might have been throughout the film. So I felt to create some interest, I DID TRY TO CONSCIOUSLY OVERLOAD THE AUDIENCE WITH IMPRESSIONS.... Always just the color was -- at least in the central part of the film -- was just a bit MORE than one would expect. And a bit more design than one normally would expect to go with the story line. So I always did try to, in the parts I could control through the design, I always tried to slip in twenty percent MORE of what one normally in viewing a movie would pick up.
...And this was, in a way, calculated to create this sort of constant overloading. Which is from what I was reading, I knew [was like a drug experience]. I had never taken any drugs. I’m a conservative, working class person who’d stick to booze all his life. And so I just knew about the psychedelic experience just by hearsay. And I guessed what it was.
MUSIC AND CONSCIOUSNESS
Hieronimus: Well, you know, one of the things I miss so much, Heinz, is being alone in my art studio for hours and days and weeks on end. And when you sit in one place with the right kind of music behind you, and with the fragrance of flowers and so on, the need for any type of drug or alcohol or anything disappears. It’s an automatic, internally generated high, which is absolutely natural to the human being. Because you’re focusing on higher elements of consciousness all the time. And you’re not even trying necessarily to plan consciously A-B-C-D, it just flows.... You must have been alone in your studio for decades. And it happens. A lot of people would say to me, how can you stand to be alone just sitting there with classical music? But you’re really not alone, are you?
Edelmann: It’s the best part. And this is why I still love the work I do. Not WHAT I do, but I still love the profession after 35 years. Because, you know, I’ve never tried to be identified with a style. I think the enjoyment of it all is not knowing what one is going to do next year, or what it’s going to look like. And as a graphic designer you don’t always get that pleasure, because there are briefs. Things have to be done at night. And they are brief, which are not interesting, but the work has to be done. But given the chance of doing what is half way one’s own, I think working by one’s self, as you say, listening to music is one of the great pleasures in life.
Hieronimus: What kind of music do you prefer when you do your work?
Edelmann: Well, you know, I’m afraid to say, it’s no longer rock, which I found inspiring in the early 70s. But as one gets older, one turns to classical music. I mean this is the natural course of things. So I either listen to Bach, for instance, or to improvised music.
Hieronimus: There are many successful artistic productions whose creators were not conscious of the numerous levels of meanings and interpretations that resulted in their work. Probably the best work in the world is done when the artists aren’t necessarily conscious of the meanings of what they’re doing. In some ways if you are conscious of the meaning, it gets in the way and makes you stale. In some ways this can be applied to the Yellow Submarine. You’ve already touched on this matter before, but could you further elaborate on the possibility of the numerous levels of meanings that could be read into Yellow Submarine, though not consciously put there by the artists?
Edelmann: It was a communal effort, done under pressure, so nobody had the time to really control one’s input. In a way, I THINK SUBMARINE IS THE ULTIMATE PIECE OF WHITE NOISE. There's so many things that went into it uncontrolled, that everybody really can build his own levels of meaning out of that.
So despite the sad facts that The Beatles Yellow Submarine nearly bankrupted the company that produced it, TV Cartoons, in London, and nearly killed the Artistic Designer, Heinz Edelmann, the resulting product succeeds in preserving The Beatles ultimate message for generations to come. As a cartoon it helps introduce the youngest generations to The Beatles music and the conclusion that we are one people on one planet, and war is over (if we want it). When Apple re-releases the remastered Yellow Submarine in the months to come, it will continue to inspire Beatlefans as long as there are Beatlefans to be inspired.
Bob Hieronimus, Ph.D. is compiling his interviews with the Crew of Yellow Submarine to be published in book form in the coming months. Specific details will be announced in a future issue of Beatlefan.