Segar: Imagine all The Beatles
An unusual exhibition of paintings opens in Colombo next week depicting imagined scenes from the life of the Beatles. The paintings are by Sri Lanka’s acclaimed artist, Raja Segar, whose bold, distinctive figurative style of art has proved immensely popular with collectors of contemporary paintings around the world.
The way they were: Royston Ellis (centre) with the Fab Four in 1963 and a painting of John Lennon and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (bottom left)
I first met Segar when we were both window shopping in Liberty Plaza more than 20 years ago. It was ironic that I should meet Segar there as he once lived in a shanty house on the site now occupied by Liberty Plaza. It was as though the painter had returned home, and I had dropped in fortuitously.
Segar approached me, not because he knew of my connection with the Beatles, but because he had just toured India by train using my 1989 book, India By Rail as a guide.We spoke about trains, he invited me to one of his exhibitions, and I became hooked on his paintings.
Segar works quickly, untroubled by modes or artistic pretension, and every painting reflects the purity of his vision and the complexities of his imagination. His work is mature and slyly knowing; his paintings exude exuberance and are fun to live with, often rewarding the spectator (or proud owner) with unexpected symbolism.
It was Segar’s enthusiasm for the music – and lifestyle – of the Beatles that began when he first heard their music in the 1960s (Segar was born in 1951) that inspires this exhibition. The paintings, in oil and watercolour, are Segar’s individualistic interpretation of the four boys, John, Paul, George and Ringo, and imagined episodes from their lives.
John Lennon
Some of the paintings carry poetical captions taken from my book of beat poems, Gone Man Squared, published in New York in 2013.
My connection with the Beatles began when I met George Harrison by chance at a café in Liverpool in June 1960. At the time I was performing my poetry to rock ‘n’ roll music, an art form I called Rocketry. I usually appeared with Cliff Richard’s group, The Shadows but when I was invited to perform at Liverpool University, I didn’t have a group to back me.
My meeting with George was as fortuitous as my meeting with Segar three decades later. George took me to a flat in Gambier Terrace, Liverpool, to meet his friends: John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Stuart Sutcliffe. John, Stuart and George were fascinated by the idea of performing poetry to music, while Paul remained sceptical.
Nevertheless, the embryo Beatles backed me at an impromptu reading I gave at the Jacaranda Café in Liverpool. When I met Paul 46 years later at a hotel in Paris, he recalled that performance and even recited the lines of one of my poems to me.
At the time John, Paul and Stuart were students and undecided what to do for a living. One evening during the few days I spent in the flat with them, we discussed what we wanted to be.
I said: “I want to be a paperback writer,” since for a writer to be published in paperback was a sign of success. That phrase became the opening line for their 1966 hit, Paperback Writer.
John was undecided about what he wanted to be. I told him that since he liked music so passionately, he should leave school and concentrate on playing and writing songs. I said I had left school at 16 to become a beat poet so why didn’t he take the plunge too? To help, I suggested that he and his band come to London to back me on my rocketry shows.
Then I asked John what was the name of his band. “Beetles,” he said, having chosen the name because he liked the Volkswagen car, the “Beetle.”
I said: “Why not spell the name with an “A” since you like beat music and the beat way of life and I am a beat poet.”
However, the Beatles didn’t come to London as they got a booking in Hamburg instead. John asked me to accompany them there as a sort of beatnik compere, but I declined. Instead, Jimmy Page, later to found Led Zeppelin, became my main accompanist.
There are some photos and you-tube film clips of me with The Beatles in Jersey and Guernsey in 1963. Segar has captured the moment when the four Beatles and myself were backstage in Guernsey in one of his iconic paintings. This, and some 20 other paintings, will be on display at the Art Gallery, Cinnamon Lakeside for one week, from Thursday, May 7, 2015.
I am delighted that Segar — with his vigorous technique and vivid imagination — has turned his talent to capturing the essence of the Beatles in paintings to remind the older generation (and excite the younger one) of those years when pop music was melodious, adventurous and meaningful.
The Beatles by Segar, The Art Gallery, Cinnamon Lakeside Hotel, Thursday 7 – Thursday May 14