Beatles News
Paul McCartney and John Lennon were an enviable songwriting duo when the Beatles first debuted. They became the pair against which every other rock band measured itself. Even today, bands aim to have a songwriting arm as strong as these two legends. However, that legacy was sullied by the fact that the duo fell apart towards the end of the band’s tenure.
By the time the Beatles announced their breakup, Lennon and McCartney were mainly name partners only. Their songwriting efforts were separate in every sense of the word. However, staying on the more positive side of their relationship, let’s take a look back at some of their first efforts together. One early release from the pair helped forge their partnership. However, both Lennon and McCartney agreed it wasn’t up to snuff as their career trekked on.
McCartney and Lennon were great at playing off and against one another. Often, they were in perfect harmony, but at other times, it was their differences that made their songs so stellar. “If I did something that was a little bit ahead of the curve, then John would come up with something that was a bit ahead of my curve,” McCartney once said. “And then so I’d go, ‘Well, how about this?’ and there was a lot of friendly competition.”
“If you know someone that long from your early teenage years to your late 20s, that’s an awful long time to be collaborating with someone, and you grow to know each other, and even when you’re apart, you’re still thinking about each other, you’re still referencing each other,” he continued. “I’ll Be On My Way”
Towards the end of the Beatles’ career, those differences stopped being creative sparks and started driving a wedge between the pair. They didn’t agree on much in the latter days of their collaboration.
However, one song they did agree on was an early offering called “I’ll Be On My Way.” This simple, late ’50s song was elementary compared to the music they were making in the late ’60s. Lennon and McCartney had a rare moment of agreement when discussing this song in hindsight.
“It’s a little bit too June-moon for me, but these were very early songs, and they worked out quite well,” McCartney once said.
Source: Alex Hopper/americansongwriter.com
On February 5, 1962, Ringo Starr stepped behind the drum kit for The Beatles for the very first time at Liverpool’s legendary Cavern Club. He was filling in for the band’s drummer, Pete Best, who was sick on the day. Best had been drumming for The Beatles since 1960, with the main attraction for his recruitment being that he owned his own drums. At the same time, Starr was a familiar face on the circuit, having played with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, who were hot in the Merseyside scene. At the substitute gig, the chemistry between the band and the new drummer was obvious, and within months, Starr was a permanent member. Looking back, the move made the four so "fab," and Starr’s unconventional approach to drumming changed rock and roll forever. The Genius of Simplicity: Ringo Starr’s Drumming Was Revolutionary.
Starr’s genius was not a flashy exhibition of technique, but was led by emotional intuition, demonstrating his musicality more sensitively. Compared to his contemporaries, Starr’s understated approach was genuinely refreshing. Keith Moon of The Who commanded chaos, Ginger Baker’s virtuosity left jaws on the floor, and Mitch Mitchell’s heavy jazz influence brought a new flavor to psychedelia. But Starr’s supposed, and even mocked, minimalism rang loudly in its impact on rock.
Ringo Starr's drumming was always anything but simple, and he quietly tore down the expectations of rock drummers. Starr was different from childhood, being naturally left-handed. At the time, this wasn’t perceived to be acceptable, so he was forced to drum on a right-handed kit. This, in itself, was enough to result in a slightly unusual, almost delayed, but very personal sound.
But what is truly so special about the style of Starr is how he approaches the drums as a melodic instrument rather than merely a time-keeping tool. In The Beatles, Starr went far beyond using the drums as a simple rhythmic accompaniment; he really entwined them as part of the arrangement. It was revolutionary in the rock world to see how the drums could be so expressive, delicate, and tuneful. This wonderful signature style is particularly prevalent in “In My Life,” “Come Together,” and “Something.”
Starr’s refusal to overplay was a defining mark of class in a band that was sometimes plagued by competitiveness. His emotional stability is evident in his playing, with a steady and reliable backbone that served the songs and band without ever making any fuss. This maturity has, sometimes, been mistaken for simplicity in the past, but Starr is exactly what The Beatles and the music-loving world needed.
Ringo Starr Helped Shape The Beatles’ Cultural Impact
Ringo Starr’s genuinely beautiful drumming is an often-overlooked reason The Beatles are so ingrained in Western popular culture. Starr’s perfectly restrained approach was guided by emotional intuition and served as a form of dialogue within the songs. This emotive drive gives many Beatles songs their well-known charm. His personality can really be felt through his playing and arrangements, relaxed, nonchalant, but very sweet and even amusing.
Source: Fiona MacPherson-Amador/collider.com
It was perhaps the most daunting second act in pop culture history. After the Beatles‘ break-up in April 1970, the then-27-year-old Paul McCartney was suddenly faced with the question of what he would do for the rest of his career following the meltdown of the greatest pop group in history.
As evidenced by the tireless touring and recording he’s done in the half-century since, McCartney needn’t have worried about what came next. But in the new trailer for the biopic Paul McCartney: Man on the Run, which chronicles Macca’s rebirth following the Beatles, the two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer describes that worrisome time and his determination to punch through the fear.
“The Beatles had broken up and I was thinking, ‘what do I do now?,” McCartney says over the strains of the Paul McCartney and Wings‘ 1974 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Band on the Run.” In voiceover, he continues, “‘How can I ever do anything that’s anywhere near as good as the Beatles?'”
The answers will be revealed in the film directed by Oscar-winner Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom, Won’t You Be My Neighbor), which follows McCartney’s rebirth after the band’s messy dissolution. The movie will be released into theaters for one-night-only by Trafalgar Releasing on Feb. 19, with tickets on sale now here. Each screening will also include a bonus conversation between McCartney and Neville.
In addition to McCartney weighing in on the his rise from the Fab Four’s ashes, the film includes rare, unreleased archival footage and music, as well as photos from the singer’s late wife and bandmate Linda McCartney, as well as interviews with Linda, Paul and their daughters Mary and Stella, Wings band members, Sean Ono Lennon, Mick Jagger, Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde and others.
“I was on my own for the first time,” McCartney says in the minute-long trailer. “I had to look inside myself, so I put a new band together.”
Along with the April 1974 chart topper that gives the movie its title, Wings also scored five other No. 1 singles on the Hot 100: “My Love,” “Listen to What the Man Said,” “Silly Love Songs,” “Let ‘Em In” and “With a Little Luck.” In Feb. 2024, the band’s third album returned to the Billboard charts following the 50th anniversary re-issue of Band on the Run, when it hit No. 5 on the Top Album Sales chart and No. 156 on the Billboard 200 album chart; during its initial run the LP scored four nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 in 1974. Wings landed five albums at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 before breaking up in 1981.
Source: Gil Kaufman/yahoo.com
Of the many famous figures featured on the iconic 1967 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover, only Bob Dylan, Dion DiMucci, and artist Larry Bell are still alive today, aside from surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
Each of these three survivors—Dylan, DiMucci, and Bell—continues to be active in their respective fields of music and art, maintaining their cultural relevance decades later. Italian actress Sophia Loren, though originally intended to appear on the cover, was ultimately not visible in the final image but is also still alive at age 91.
The cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, released on June 1, 1967, is one of the most studied images in pop culture history. Packed with writers, actors, artists, gurus, and cultural rebels, for many, it became a list of the era’s most notable people.
More than half a century later, most of those faces are long gone, making the few survivors all the more remarkable. Excluding Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr of the Beatles, who are still very much with us, only three people pictured on the cover are alive today—though one additional person who was supposed to be on the cover but isn’t visible is also still around. Bob Dylan (84)
American folk pop singer Bob Dylan at a press conference in London. Dylan’s inclusion on the top row was reportedly John Lennon‘s idea, and it makes perfect sense. By 1967, Dylan had already reshaped songwriting and pushed folk into rock. These days, he’s still recording and touring. He remains very popular, as evidenced by the success of his recent biopic, A Complete Unknown.
Dion DiMucci (86)
Dion appears in the second row, included by artist Peter Blake, who admired him deeply. Long before he was known for introspective songwriting, Dion was a Bronx kid who helped bring doo-wop and early rock into the mainstream. Songs like “Runaround Sue” and “The Wanderer” were already part of the cultural fabric by the mid-1960s. He is still releasing music and sometimes playing live, though he is often seen relaxing at his home in Florida on social media.
Artist Larry Bell attends the screening of Dennis Hopper's "The Last Movie" during Paris Photo Los Angeles at Paramount Studios on April 25, 2014 in Hollywood, California. Larry Bell is one of the quieter names on the Sgt. Pepper cover, but his importance shouldn’t be underestimated. A key figure in the Light and Space movement, Bell was part of the West Coast art scene that was redefining perceptions of materials and minimalism in the 1960s. His inclusion reflects how wide-ranging the album’s cultural net really was. Bell is still alive today, and his work continues to be exhibited.
The famously breathtaking Italian movie star, along with Jesus, Gandhi and several others, was originally supposed to be on the cover, but didn’t make the final cut. According to behind-the-scenes photos, a cut-out of her was placed behind the wax version of the Beatles, and thus blocked in the final photo.
Source: Lauren Novak/remindmagazine.com
More than a few of us can claim, with some confidence, to know every Beatles song. And indeed it may be true, in that we’ve heard every track of all their studio albums. But as decade after decade of Beatles scholarship has demonstrated, there’s knowing their songs, and then there’s knowing their songs. Musician and YouTuber David Bennett has made it his project to attain the second kind of knowledge, and on his dedicated series UnBeatled, to share it with the public. In each UnBeatled video he analyzes just one song — “Help!,” “Here Comes the Sun,” “Penny Lane,” and so on — at a level of detail fine enough to necessitate not just breaking it down to its component tracks, but also examining the demos and unreleased takes recorded in the studio.
This process can reveal a great deal about the Beatles’ songwriting process, as Bennett explains in the video at the top of the post. In the course of twenty minutes, he covers eleven songs, a selection not necessarily limited to the group’s universally praised compositions.
Take the first, “Yellow Submarine,” whose early recordings differ both lyrically, melodically, and in time signature from the version we know (and may or may not love), beginning with an idea of John’s and being further shaped by Paul through its iterations. Another of John’s musical seeds is “Everybody Had a Hard Year,” whose fingerpicking pattern (originally learned from Donovan in India) is also heard in “Julia” and “Dear Prudence,” and which evolved, with different chords, into the middle section of “I’ve Got a Feeling.”
Such interconnections come as rewards of close and deep listening to the Beatles canon. And certain songs turn out to be worlds of their own: “Strawberry Fields Forever,” for instance, was assembled out of two completely different recordings, then adjusted in tempo and pitch to match in the middle. One of those takes includes the voice of producer George Martin counting in the orchestra, the pitch of which suggests that its members had originally played in a different key than the one we hear. As Bennett notes, using the then relatively novel technology of “vari-speed” had become practically standard in the Beatles’ studio process, as such technological layering and adjustment itself became a key part of their songwriting process. It contributed much to their signature “vibey, psychedelic, uncanny sound”: sought after by many bands over the past six decades, but never truly replicated.
Source: Colin Marshall/openculture.com
People likely assume that John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote The Beatles’ hit “Twist And Shout”. They wrote nearly all of their music, so why wouldn’t they write this one? We can’t answer that question for you, but what we can say is that Phil Medley and Bert Berns wrote this iconic single.(The Top Notes intitially performed “Twist And Shout” in 1961, two years before The Beatles go a hold of it.)
Back to the story, both writers were incredibly influential in the development of modern popular music, yet their names are known merely by those who fancy themselves as music historians and super fans. Medley and Berns wrote “If I Didn’t Have a Dime (To Play the Jukebox)”, “Killer Joe”, “These Worldly Wonders”, and “Anything You Wanna Do”.
Aside from his collaborations with Medley, Berns was a producer, writer, and record label executive; he co-founded Bang Records with a few other colleagues in 1965. Some of the artists signed to that label include The McCoys, The Strangeloves, Paul Davis, Neil Diamond, and Van Morrison. Berns is often credited with starting the careers of both Morrison and Diamond. Additionally, some of Berns’ other credits include “Piece of My Heart”, “Cry Baby”, and “Heart Be Still”. Bert Berns Accomplished All of This in Seven Short Years
Years after the writing of “Twist And Shout”, Bert Berns co-founded Bang Records in 1965. Tragically, just two years later, Berns passed away at 38 years old from cardiovascular disease. There are artists who unfortunately come and go like the wind, but Berns’ has posthumously stuck around.
“Bert Berns should be recognized as one of the most important record men of the 20th century. He was responsible for bringing Latin music into rock and roll. He was a founding father of New York uptown soul. Unlike most of his peers, he would often write and produce his songs alone,” said his son, Brett Berns.
Source: Peter Burditt/americansongwriter.com
Elvis Presley and Paul McCartney are not only two music legends, but they were also at loggerheads during the height of their fame. It’s well known that during his lifetime, Elvis was not a fan of The Beatles, mainly because of their progressive politics; however, as a fellow artist, he begrudgingly admitted he enjoyed some of their music. McCartney, too, had some rather strong opinions about the king of rock 'n' roll, although his remarks remained decidedly more politically correct than the former’s. A perfect example of this is when the “Riding to Vanity Fair” singer revealed in an interview that one of Elvis’ biggest hit singles, “Blue Suede Shoes,” was, in his opinion, not better than the original. Paul McCartney Once Dissed Elvis Presley's Cover Of "Blue Suede Shoes"
McCartney, as well, had opinions of his own about Presley's music. Namely, Presley's 1956 hit single "Blue Suede Shoes." The rockabilly hit was a cover of the famed singer, songwriter, and guitarist Carl Perkins, who had originally released the song a year earlier. According to McCartney, who was a close associate of Perkins, he preferred the original version to Presley's rendition. In an interview with Perkins, McCartney recalled: “[I] had heard Elvis had done that, but the thing I always loved about it was your intro. It’s much hipper, you're beginning. I did it in a club, and the guitar player knew your version, and he got so mad at the band because they did the Elvis version."
elvis-presley-king-of-rock-n-roll
The year was 1973, and the iconic rock album Band on the Run was released. Three years prior, Paul McCartney left the band that would catapult him into fame, which was, of course, The Beatles. From there, he embarked on his own successful solo career, which spans decades and saw him produce arguably some of his best work ever, such as the albums Pipes of Peace, Press to Play, and Off The Ground. However, as many avid McCartney fans are sure to know, the "Hey Jude" singer joined another rock band, known as Paul McCartney and Wings, which famously featured his wife, Linda, on keyboards. The American-British band released a total of seven studio albums and achieved twenty-three US Top 40 hits, including six number one singles on the Billboard 100 chart. The group's most critically praised and popular album, Band on the Run, featured over nine songs on the original UK release, including the hit tracks "Jet" and "Band on the Run."
Source: Karly B./collider.com
Beatlemania took over London last weekend as the capital was transformed into 1964 New York for filming. The new Beatles epic is now underway with Paul Mescal playing Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, Joseph Quinn portraying George Harrison and Harris Dickinson taking on the role of John Lennon.
The dramatic scenes form part of director Sam Mendes' ambitious four-film anthology charting the rise of The Beatles. First look snaps show the streets lined with screaming fans, police barricades and period details as scenes recreated the band's legendary arrival outside The Plaza Hotel.
Passers-by stopped in their tracks as history repeated itself, with London briefly standing in for Fifth Avenue at the height of Beatlemania.
Source: Gemma Jones/express.co.uk
During a promotion for The Beatles’ eleventh album, Abbey Road, George Harrison picked some of his favorite tracks, including “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window,” a song Paul McCartney wrote about fan Diane Ashley, who was once hanging outside of his home in St. John’s Wood in London and eventually broke in. Harrison called it “a very good song of Paul’s with great lyrics.”
He also praised “Golden Slumbers,” a McCartney ode to finding solace in love, inspired by a 17th-century poem by Thomas Dekker, and John Lennon’s more atmospheric “Because.”
The track, featuring the Beatles’ three-part harmony, overdubbed twice more to give the effect of nine vocals, was the last song Lennon brought in during the Abbey Road sessions, and the final one recorded for the album.
Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”
A classically trained pianist, one day in 1969, Yoko Ono was playing around with Beethoven’s “Piano Sonata No. 14” in C-sharp minor. Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” struck Lennon, who asked Ono to play the chords backwards and started writing “Because.”
“Yoko was playing ‘Moonlight Sonata’ on the piano,” recalled Lennon. “I said, ‘Can you play those chords backward?’ and wrote ‘Because’ around them. The lyrics speak for themselves; they’re clear. No bulls–t. No imagery, no obscure references.”
Source: Tina Benitez-Eves/American Songwriter
It’s the song that just about everyone alive has heard. And it was one of the first songs to put the Fab Four on the map. On this day, February 1, 1964, “I Want To Hold Your Hand” by The Beatles hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It was a major first for the Liverpool band, who had previously not hit No. 1 in America before. The song entered the coveted chart at No. 45 in mid-January, and by the time it made it to No. 1 a few weeks later, the British Invasion movement was in full swing.
“I Want To Hold Your Hand” would hold that top spot for a whopping seven weeks. From there, it would be replaced by another Beatles tune, “She Loves You”. The former song, however, would stay on the Hot 100 chart for an additional 15 weeks. Today, it remains The Beatles’ best-selling single globally and has sold more than 12 million copies. The Legacy of “I Want To Hold Your Hand” by The Beatles Lives On.
“I Want To Hold Your Hand” was conceived by John Lennon and Paul McCartney at the behest of Brian Epstein. He (and their label) wanted the band to produce a song that would appeal to American listeners. It was in the basement of Jane Asher’s parents’ home where McCartney and Lennon took to the piano and composed the tune.
“We wrote a lot of stuff together, one on one, eyeball to eyeball,” Lennon said of the song’s composition. “Like in ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ I remember when we got the chord that made the song. We were in Jane Asher’s house, downstairs in the cellar playing on the piano at the same time. And we had, ‘Oh you-u-u/ got that something …’ And Paul hits this chord and I turn to him and say, ‘That’s it!’ I said, ‘Do that again!’ In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that—both playing into each other’s noses.”
The Beatles would later record the song at EMI Studios in October 1963, along with the B-side, “This Boy”. “I Want To Hold Your Hand” would be the first Fab Four tune to be recorded using four-track tech at the time. After its US release on December 26, 1963, the song would be a No. 1 hit across the board. It topped charts in the US, UK, and several countries in Europe.
Source: Em Casalena/americansongwriter.com
