What happened when John Lennon showed up at WNEW-FM and broadcast for two hours – a show that's still talked about nearly 50 years later

If you were tuned into New York's WNEW-FM on the afternoon of September 28, 1974, you would've heard a whimsical take on the weather forecast, read by a familiar voice with a Liverpool accent.

“Mostly cloudy with periods,” John Lennon began, pausing a beat. “Of rain this afternoon, tonight and tomorrow. High times - oh no, wish it was. High this afternoon and tomorrow in the 70s, low tonight in the mid-60s. Monday’s outlook, fair and cool, man.”

Source: Classic Rock

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A prized set of Beatles’ autographs from their famous Royal Variety Performance appearance will go on sale later this month.

The night is best remembered for when John Lennon said to the crowd ahead of the group’s last song: “For our last number I’d like to ask your help. To the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands, and the rest of you, if you’d just rattle your jewellery.”

The remark brought peals of laughter, but it was also a special evening for Fiona James, whose father, actor Gerald James, also performed for the Queen Mother on November 4 1963.

She wanted the signatures of the Fab Four, and the moment her father passed a pen to John Lennon was captured on camera, with fellow band member Ringo Starr in the foreground.

Source: Kim Pilling/independent.co.uk

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George Harrison initially started writing one of The Traveling Wilburys’ hit songs, “End of the Line,” like a Bob Dylan song. The former Beatle thought of his bandmate’s music a lot.

In a 1988 joint interview for MTV (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters) with his fellow Traveling Wilburys, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne, George explained how he wrote the band’s song “End of the Line.”

The interviewer pointed out, “There’s all these questions about who wrote what on the album, and you can kind of tell because who’s singing, but everybody is singing this song.”

Petty added, “You can’t tell, they’re all wrong.” George said, “… some of them we said, ‘OK, we need somebody to sing this one; why don’t you do it, because it suited you.’ So you can’t really tell.”

Source: cheatsheet.com

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On August 8, 1969, on a street in north-west London and almost directly outside a celebrated recording studio, one of the most famous ever album covers was shot. Photographer Iain MacMillan took the image that would adorn the cover of the brilliant new record named after the street where he stood, Abbey Road. The zebra crossing, almost exactly in front of the studio where The Beatles had created the vast majority of their body of work, was about to become one of the most recognized sites in London.

Source: Paul Sexton

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As Oasis exploded into the mainstream comparisons were naturally made between them and the Fab Four.

Because they were a young British band hailing from a northern city (Manchester), the press figured this could be the second coming of The Beatles. But Harrison disagreed. He said of Oasis: "The music lacks depth, and the singer Liam [Gallagher] is a pain, the rest of the band don’t need him."

And McCartney agreed with the star. He said: "They’re derivative and they think too much of themselves. They mean nothing to me."

Things then got worse for Oasis. As if it wasn't bad enough to have two members of The Beatles slamming their band, The Rolling Stones joined in.

Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger was quizzed over the most popular band in the country at the time. And he wasn't going to sugarcoat his opinions.

He replied: "You can’t dance to it, the new album’s impossible."
Guitarist Keith Richards had a similar opinion of Oasis. He simply branded the band: "They’re crap."

Source: Callum Crumlish/express.co.uk

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Multiple legendary rock bands have undergone lineup changes over the past 60 years since the genre hit the mainstream. Van Halen has had more than one lead singer since the 1970s and Fleetwood Mac once existed without Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, to name a couple of examples. Previous lineups of The Beatles might not be so widely known, as the changes occurred before Beatlemania took the world by storm.Paul McCartney and John Lennon began performing together in 1957 as teenagers. George Harrison was a friend of McCartney's from school who later joined the group. Stuart Sutcliffe joined, but only for a few months. Pete Best rounded out the group as the drummer. The quintet spent time performing in Liverpool and in Hamburg, Germany in the early 1960s. Future manager Brian Epstein discovered them as a four-piece without Sutcliffe in Liverpool and led them toward a record deal with Parlophone, an EMI company led by George Martin. Martin suggested a better drummer. The band chose Richard Starkey, also known as Ringo Starr (per Britannica).

Source: Anna Robinson/grunge.com

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