Robert Hieronimus: Greetings North and Central America. This is 21st Century Radio's Hieronimus & Co., where knowledge comes first, reminding you that we're not just the people from the east or west coasts of America; we're not only Americans, Occidentals or Orientals. We are people from the planet Earth. We are Earth people. And tonight we climb aboard the Beatles' Yellow Submarine with an artist who helped create this masterpiece. Bob Balser, Director of Animation of this cult-classic film, will be speaking to us from his home in Barcelona, Spain. And we'll learn some of the levels of meaning within this classic, and what it took to complete it.

And to kick off Yellow Submarine, Part One in our interview with Animation Director Bob Balser, we're offering, listen to this friends, a copy of the first seventeen pages of the original Yellow Submarine script. Plus copies of original drawings of the Beatles in their Yellow Submarine uniforms. Both, mind you, both autographed by Animation Director, Bob Balser.


Welcome back to 21st Century Radio's Hieronimus and Company where knowledge comes first. Our Executive Producer and Research Assistant is Laura Cortner, who is being assisted tonight by Cynthia Batterton. Our Engineer is Steve Dean. You can join us at 1-800-487-8255. That's 1-800-ITS-TALK.

As we've discussed on previous shows, according to humanistic and transpersonal psychologists such as Carl Jung and Rollo May and Joseph Campbell, symbols and myths contribute significantly to mental and emotional well-being--as well as to cultural stability. Contemporary culture is lacking substantive myths and symbols to support it, and the mental and emotional and cultural health of our times is disintegrating.

A little over 20 years ago today, in 1967, I was seeking a method to connect the diverging generations, and I felt that music could do it. After all, Music is the universal language. I began traveling and spending a little time with various rock musicians in hopes that their music could act as the necessary cement for our culture. Personal experience with Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, Janis Joplin, Frank Zappa and the Lovin' Spoonful indicated to me that they hadn't the consciousness or drive to bring the generations together.

But I did note that there was a group who did and still do --and that was the Beatles, and I never met those folks.

Having studied symbols and myths for many years, I was ecstatic when I first saw the movie "The Yellow Submarine" . I could read many levels of meaning occurring simultaneously before my eyes. It meant little to me whether the creators of the Yellow Submarine were conscious of what they had accomplished, because frequently artists are not aware of higher messages they are transmitting. Six years after I saw the movie, I was teaching a two credit college course on its meaning.

Tonight we begin our probe into what I believe is a world cultural mythology which has acted as a cement between generations of world citizens. In the nearly quarter of a century since its creation, it's done a lot of good in my opinion. Joining us from his home in Barcelona Spain, is Bob Balser, the Animation Director of the Yellow Submarine to tell us about its creation and anticipate the question of what its mythology
reflects.

Welcome to 21st Century Radio's Hieronimus and Company where knowledge comes first, Bob....

Bob Balser: Good evening.

Bob Hieronimus: And thank you for generously sending us the
autographed copies of the script and drawings for our listeners.

BB: My pleasure.

BH: Now, what are you doing in Barcelona Spain?

BB: Well, I've been in Spain for a long time. I've been in Europe for a long time and as a matter of fact, I think I've been here since we made
the Yellow Submarine back in 1967-68.

BH: What projects are you presently working on, Bob?

BB: I have my own studio here in Barcelona now. And do a lot of,
looking at different kinds of things... TV series... why we did a thing called "The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe" which won an Emmy back in 1980, for CBS. We work on series like Charlie Brown and Snoopy. Did a thing for BBC last year called "Barney" which you'll probably be seeing in the states soon. And I'm now working on a production, which is going to be a Catalan-American co-production, one of the first originating in Spain.

BH: Why, I look forward to seeing that. Bob, when did you first become aware of the Yellow Submarine Project and how did you become involved in it?

BB: Well, the thing is that, I was working here in Spain. And I was freelancing and having worked in Europe, you know you get a little bit of certain opportunities, or in those days, you had an opportunity to send films to festivals, and so forth, it was just a different kind of life here. And I'd won a few prizes at some of the festivals. When you win a prize here or there, you get to be known. And they called me from London and asked me whether I'd be willing to come in and be one of their unit directors on the Yellow Submarine. They didn't call it... they just said a Beatles' film at that time. And I went up to London, got there, I found out they didn't have any units. It was just two of us, Jack Stokes and myself, who ended up directing the film. And it was one of those serendipitous experiences.

BH: Could you briefly give us the story line of the Yellow Submarine?

BB: Well, this is very interesting when you say the story-line, the, unfortunately, there was never a story-line. They had an idea to do a film about a trip in a Yellow Submarine, certainly because of the Beatles' Yellow Submarine song. And when I got there, there was really no concrete story. And this is, I think this is probably one of the most interesting aspects of it, it's this film was created as we went along. And it was a fantastic experience. It's something that could never happen again, you could never gather the kind of people we had together.

And the, probably the most important person in the film was Heinz Edelmann, who came up with the concept of the Blue Meanies. Because that didn't exist when the film started. And we also had a very famous English poet, Roger McGough, who you may know from his humorous and very serious poetry. And he wrote a lot of the dialogue. And the Beatles didn't, they were never happy with the former productions of the Beatles series that had been made, which was done by the same people. And so they didn't want to have anything to do with it.

And we had actors who took the part of the Beatles. When you say what's the story about, it started out as a trip in a Yellow Submarine, and then it, little by little, evolved into a situation with the forces of good and evil. Don't forget that was a time of flower power in the world... and it just evolved.

BH: Well, as for the story-line, there are some of our listeners who may not have seen it, and I don't know if there's anyone out there in the world that hasn't seen this great movie. Pepperland is a kind of a Utopia that lives in harmony because its philosophy is "All you need is Love." Music promotes this theme.

It is attacked by Blue Meanies who despise both music and love. Under siege, help is sent for with the Yellow Submarine and Young Fred sails to Liverpool and entices the Beatles to help. The Beatles return through a series of Seas (Consumer Products, Science, Monsters, Phrenology, Holes) and finally to the Sea of Green. They unite Pepperland with their music and "love" philosophy and transform the bad guys into good guys. This is what I found very interesting, they did not kill the Blue Meanies, there are no deaths throughout this entire movie.

BB: That was a marvelous part. The film was finished at one point, and it had several endings. This was a big problem, the film had never had a real story-line or a real script which we followed. It was just, as I say, just evolving, even the songs were, we just knew that we had certain songs and we, you know, we just sort of, as you said earlier on, many times artists do things that they don't really realize what they're doing.
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we just were having fun. and at the end though, you see, everybody realized that the film had to have an end, so we worked very hard to come up with an end. and i'm very happy with that end, where max turns, where the music comes and he, the chief blue meanie gets covered up with flowers and they can no longer be blue and mean, and so they join pepperland. i think it's, it's a very simplistic, maybe, statement of what people would like, but i think it was a positive influence and a positive message.

BH: No doubt about it. It's a story of self-transformation and I think that especially today, we need that kind of a story. Rather than going to war and allegedly winning it.

BB: I would agree with you.

BH: That's for sure, I know we can agree on that.

BH: Now one of the things, again that we were touching on a minute ago, deals with the way the Beatles transform the Blue Meanies. They didn't have to kill them, they didn't have to annihilate them, and this is why I think this is the beginning of an important contribution to world mythology. And I think Joseph Campbell, if he were alive (and we're going to have, Dr. Rollo May come on board in the coming months to discuss the mythologies) would agree. And I think that is where we're headed in the world if we're going to have a One World. What do you think of that Bob?

BB: Well, I definitely agree with you, but the problem is that the philosophy and the belief is one thing, and making it into a reality is another thing.

BH: Yes, indeed.

BB: We're going to have to struggle for a long time in order to bring about the kind of world we're talking about.

BH: No two ways about it, but I think that's what great art is about. And that's one of the reasons, I was ecstatic when I found out that we would be able to talk to someone about the movie the Yellow Submarine, someone who had a hand in it. We're about to get to what the work-a-day project was like and how long it took to put this thing together.

BH: All right, we're back aboard Bob.

BB: Lovely

BH: Tell us about what it was like, the daily work, on a project this large... on the Yellow Submarine.

BB: It was a marvelous project. As I say, this was a project that sort of just developed. Basically what happened on the Yellow Submarine was the fact that the rights to use the Beatle music for film, were running out. And so before they ran out, King Features, United Artists wanted to make a feature film to be able to capitalize on the rights that they had. And one of the things to be said is that George Dunning who is the Director of the film, George was one of the great geniuses of animation... very, very profound thinker, and a marvelous designer. And during the course of the film, he decided that he would put together a good crew of people and we would have all the freedom to make that film.

So, we had two groups working. Jack Stokes, the other Animation Director, and myself divided the film in half and we had about two hundred people... two hundred twenty people working on the film. And they rented some big office space, and we put up a lot of chairs and tables and animation discs and so forth, and it was a great, great deal of fun. It was like a big family. Everybody was enjoying what they were doing.

We had Heinz Edelmann, who was the designer of the characters of the Yellow Submarine, who was, who knew nothing about animation. And he was very concerned about the fact that he was looking at drawings, animation drawings and they weren't as good as his original drawings. And I had to convince him that you know, we would take care that, and it would look exactly like his designs when it came out on the film.

And we had a very mixed crew... we had all kinds of people from all over, from all over the British Commonwealth, we had Australians and Canadians, and French and Dutch, and as a matter of fact, a lot of very, very famous film makers today that worked with me on the Yellow Submarine. It took about a year. It was a one year project. It had to be done by a certain date. And everybody just pushed on it, to reach that date.

BH: Well, I'm telling you, for something that was pushed, it certainly looks natural. I'll tell you....

BB: Well, we had an awful lot of good people working on it. And one of the things, I had a long discussion with, after the film came out, Time Magazine did an article on it. And the Time reporters called and they, you know, they were talking to everybody who had worked on the Yellow Submarine. And they said what did you do to create a new animation style and so forth. And I had to say to them, that no we didn't create anything, what we did really was just for the first time, be able to use all the kind of experimental art/film techniques and things that many people have been doing for many, many years in the animation festival circuit. And that allowed us to, since nobody really cared what we're doing, and this is probably one of the marvelous things about it, they didn't care about what we were doing because they figured with the Beatle name, it didn't matter what we did, they would make money.

And so, that gave us the tremendous freedom to just really, really have fun with the.... And one of the important things about that film also, was the fact that it was never made for children. It was never made for adults, it was never made for.... It was just made because we were having fun doing it.

BH: Bob, what was your job in the Yellow Submarine? Did you just check on people's drawings, or did you decide who was doing what?

BB: No, as a matter of fact my job was really to act as co-director of the film. The way I told you that we had no script, everybody just sort of plunged in. And my part of the film was fairly easy because I directed the film from the beginning to the part where the Beatles returned to Pepperland. And that meant all of the trips through the sea of holes, through Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, all of that part, the Sea of Time, which is my very favorite sequence.

And Jack Stokes took the part at the end of the film when the Beatles come back and conquer the Blue Meanies. And that was the problem, since my part, anything could go made my life fairly easy and a lot of fun. Jack had some very big problems because there was no way of really resolving, since the conflict hadn't been well established. So we sort of worked the film both ends against the middle.

And as a matter of fact, the beginning of the film, the title sequence of the film, which you got with the copies of the script, that was done after the film was finished. Because that was done so that we could explain everything that we had done while we were making the film. It was a very complex and confusing situation.

BH: Sounds like back engineering there.

BB: It was, but it was a marvelous time.

BH: I bet it was a marvelous time. You know, a lot of folks who I've talked to about the movie, think that Peter Max did all of the artwork. Did you ever hear that before?

BB: Well, that's very interesting, because you know, when I started to talk about the techniques and so forth, we would have thought that the Yellow Submarine would have started a whole new thing in terms of animated film. As it is, the film sort of put an end to, I mean there was an awful lot of things that came out of it. Peter Max was one of the big things that came out of the technique, there were lots of TV commercials, there were a lot of things that were done. But Peter Max had nothing to do with the Yellow Submarine. He was a very good designer though, and I enjoyed his things.

BH: Yes, certainly.

BH: Let's get back to Bob Balser, all right Bob, I started to mention something about mythology. Now, I take it you're familiar with the work of Joseph Campbell and the Hero's Journey?

BB: No, I'm not too familiar with his work.

BH: All right, well, Joseph Campbell basically says that to apply any knowledge, to become involved with any knowledge about a mythology, there are three very important stages that deal with what's called the Hero's Journey. And in my opinion, what we have in the Yellow Submarine are heroes. And the heroes in the Yellow Submarine are obviously, in my opinion, the Beatles. And he says basically the three stages are Separation, Initiation and Return.

Separation of course is in the movie as the Yellow Sub leaves Pepperland to get help.

The Initiation, help is found, that is the Beatles are found. But their struggle to Return is really quite a momentous struggle, transforming our heroes by overcoming big problems with the various "seas," like you mentioned before, especially the sea of monsters, Bob. That was a beautiful sequence. That's one of the most beautiful sequences I've seen on film. You mentioned there were over 200 artists that you said worked on this film?

BB: Two hundred people. They were all good artists, but you know, it's a very big job doing an animated film. So you have a lot of different steps that are done. There were about 10 people who were really the creative drive behind it.

BH: Ten people!

BB: Well, there were just the basic, really the design and preparation and so forth. The other people are all the animators and the people who trace, painted and painted backgrounds and cameramen and editors and so forth. It's a huge crew situation.

BH: Well, that last step with Joseph Campbell, I just wanted to mention this before moving on, is the Return. And that's when the Yellow Submarine returns and does battle with the Blue Meanies. And the Blue Meanies, as we mentioned before, are transformed with love and music and they become in a certain sense allies. That is enormously important as far as I'm concerned, in the evolution of.... Well, I think it was Paul who said that the Yellow Submarine song was a children's song, however, as you noted the Yellow Submarine movie was not a children's movie. Is that right Bob?

BB: Well, the thing is that, as I said before that we never made it for children, we just made it for ourselves and had a lot of fun. But I have never seen a child who has seen the film who hasn't loved it and gotten a lot out of it.

BH: Well, my daughter is 4 years old, and we watch the Yellow Submarine at least once a month, Bob.

BB: Well, I know that a lot of little kids look at it and just love it. You see, it works on so many levels, I mean, just what you're talking about, in terms of the mythology and in terms of it somehow seemed to have evolved into what it is. It was not... it probably was because it was a synergy between all of these creative people coming together. It's something I never really thought about until this moment when you were mentioning it to me.

BH: All right now, we're talking with Bob Balser, the Animation Director of the Yellow Submarine. And boy, I've learned a great deal about how this film was put together. I am truly surprised Bob.

BB: I'll tell you this is the first time I think I've ever talked about the Yellow Submarine on radio.

BH: Well, I'm hoping it won't be your last. You know, Bob, there are a whole bunch of other items that were put out on the Yellow Submarine. And I've been collecting them throughout the years, it's a good thing I started about 10 years ago. Are you familiar with the Corgi Yellow Submarine toy?

BB: I am, and I'm sick that I never got one!

BH: You want one?

BB: I would love one.

BH: All right, you've got one.

BB: Oh, fantastic!

BH: I've been collecting them and... now I'm not going to give you my one that's in the best of shape now, Bob.

BB: That's OK. It's just that it came out and I just never got around to getting one and suddenly they just disappeared from the market.

BH: Yes, they did and I struggled mightily for about 3 or 4 years into locating, you know what they are in the cost of now, brand new ones in the boxes?

BB: How much?

BH: Six hundred, fifty bucks. And who would have known? You know, I've forgotten how much they were when they came out, but it couldn't have been more that 10 or 12 dollars. But boy, they are gorgeous.

BB: They weren't very expensive. But that was a time when things weren't as expensive as they are today.

BH: Well, we'll get you one. It's not going to be in the best of possible shape, but it's going to be a nice one. All right, now...

BB: Well, it will be a nice memory.

BH: It certainly will. You know, there were a comic books put out, I've only gotten one of those.

BB: There were so many things that came out...and if you look at the comic books, you'll find out... 'cause one of the interesting things... in the title of the film, you'll see that there must be about 10 people listed as writer on the Yellow Submarine. And the reason for that is that when the project was first thought up, a lot of different people made contributions, wrote scripts.

And some of those scripts were turned into comic books, and so forth, but the final script was really done sitting up all night with a bottle of whiskey one time.

BH: Well, let's just hope it was good whiskey Bob. Was it good whiskey?

BB: Yeah, it was very good. We started at 10:00 at night and finished at 6:00 in the morning, and then went to a presentation at 8:00 with all the drawings that we made all night long. And it was an interesting way to put it into work. And that was the night that the Blue Meanies were created.

BH: Well, that's fantastic. Let me give you another translation and run this by you, just the word, the term Yellow Submarine itself. You know I taught a 2-credit course in this particular area, not that I know everything about symbology, but it was just an interpretation. It goes kind of like this: Yellow is the symbol for the Sun, it's a symbol for expansion, it's a symbol for intelligence and mind.

Submarine of course, is underwater or the subconscious mind. Water of course is linked to the mother of life and the origins of the physical world and all living things on this planet. Therefore the Yellow Submarine is a combination of the sun or solar, masculine principle with the mother, creation and water. So what you have is a kind of a balance, the Yellow Submarine is not necessarily just masculine, or not necessarily feminine; it's a balance of the male/female principle. What do you think of that idea?

BB: I think it's incredible. I think that we should get together and sort of do a real job on this thing.

BH: Well, I'll tell you what, I've written a lot of material on it, and I'd be most happy to send some of this stuff along to you, because this is a project.... The Yellow Submarine idea, as far as I'm concerned, as I mentioned earlier on, and I'm not kidding around about this friends, at this time in history, we need things that unite people, rather than blow each other up. Because we're heading for some pretty hard times, and the more difficult it becomes, if we still think that we can use force and not have it affect us for generations to come, I think that's a foolish idea, Bob.

BB: I do, too.

BH: I agree with you on that one. Also, the name of the Beatles can be analyzed, and I'm certain there are lots of ways of analyzing it, but there was an ancient god, Bob, called Khepera. He was a scarab beetle.

BB: That's right. A very famous Egyptian god.

BH: And of course Khepera was a symbol for the act of creation. And the Beatles were very much involved in many acts of creation. Very creative folks.

BB: Many times it's very interesting when somebody does something, they have somebody else look at it, and freely see or analyze it. Because, I can tell you, Bob, that really I don't think that the Beatles really thought anything about it when they called themselves the Beatles. They must have had some subconscious influence.

BH: Oh, for certain. I'm certain that it had something to do with the "beat" as the pulse. You know, when you're playing the drums or strumming the guitar. I think, as a matter of fact I think I read in which they talked about that. But the interesting thing about symbols and mythologies are, there are many levels of interpretation that are very rich, needless to say. Like the colors. The colors in the Yellow Submarine have to be the most... the way they were put together, within the clouds, say for instance... I mentioned the area of the sea of monsters. Was there trial and error in developing that technique, or would it just come out all at once?

BB: I don't know, you know it just came. It was a thing where the people who painted the background just did the colors from a natural sense of their feeling about color. It was a time when things were starting to... as they say, it was the flower time, it was a psychedelic time. A lot of people make references to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds with LSD. The colors just sort of reflected the feelings of all the people who were working on the film.

BH: We have an important caller on the line. Oh, he's not going to be on the line? Well, he asked the question. Bob Q. of WARA in Attleboro, Massachusetts, he asked this question: There were rumors that the Yellow Submarine was supposed to symbolize a drug or a pill capsule. What do you think of that Bob?

BB: No way. I know that there were a lot of people that thought that, but I can tell you something really and truly, there was nobody, at least within the creative bunch of people, who were on drugs while we made the Yellow Submarine. We probably had a lot of artists who were painting who were doing things, who were smoking and so forth. But the people who really were making the creative decisions were not on any kind of drugs. I can guarantee it.

BH: I don't see how they could.

BB: Well, you can't. You really can't, because your mind has got to be clear in order to be able to let the truth come out.

BH: Absolutely, and I think that's enormously important for people to remember, that creation is an act of a balance between the left and the right hemisphere of the brain, and that's a very difficult thing to do under any type of a drug experience. Right now we need to pause to let some of our stations identify themselves.

BH: Bob, are you familiar with Rocky and Bullwinkle stuff?

BB: Yes, very familiar, an awful lot of my friends worked on
Bullwinkle.

BH: Oh yes, June Foray.

BB: Yeah, June Foray, Chris Jenkyns, Alan Sheene, there were a lot of marvelous people working on the Bullwinkle stuff.

BH: What do you think of the Rocky and Bullwinkle material in
comparison to the mythology or the work on the Yellow Submarine?

BB: You know, the Bullwinkle show was basically the same kind of
thinking that went into the Yellow Submarine. The fact that fairy tales... these were things which were very profound in terms of their humor, their satire, and their message.

BH: What about Pogo, have you ever paid any attention to Pogo?

BB: Definitely, and Pogo of course, Walt Kelly was a Walt Disney
animator. And he left Disney to start drawing the Pogo strip. And that's also a kind of very serious communication. At least in its time.

BH: Well, it's coming back. Bob, we're going to be saying goodbye. But, before we say goodbye, we want to give you a few prizes Bob. This is what's headed your way: we're going to send you a Corgi Yellow Submarine, we're going to send you a Rocky and Bullwinkle role playing game, in which you're going to find all kinds of Rocky and Bullwinkle puzzles and puppets and that kind of thing. Then we're going to give you a Pogo book. OK?

BB: Fantastic!

BH: Well, I want to thank you very much Bob. I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed talking with you over the last, oh gosh, several months. And thank you for your generosity, and I hope maybe we can work together on a future project on interpreting the Yellow Submarine.

BB: Well, I'd like to keep the relationship going.

BH: Certainly, we'll be talking with you in just a little while.