The Beatles weren't exactly a cult band as 1965 ended.  Their albums and singles dominated the pop charts. They played in front of more than 55,000 fans at Shea Stadium. They even conquered the big screen. Twice.

But Dec. 3, 1965, proved to be a seminal moment for the Fab Four – the release of Rubber Soul, the album where "the Beatles became the Beatles."

Widely considered one of the most influential albums ever made, it's hard to believe Rubber Soul was something of a rush job. The Beatles went into the studio in October 1965 to crank out an album in time for the holiday season. Despite the tight deadline, however, The Beatles decided to make their most audacious record yet.

"By the time of Rubber Soul, they were ready for new musical directions," said George Martin, The Beatles' long-time producer. "In the early days, they were very influenced by American rhythm and blues … and then, as time went on, other influences became apparent: classical influences and modern music."

Said drummer Ringo Starr: "We were all open to anything. You could walk in with an elephant, as long as it was going to make a musical note."  While filming the movie Help! in April of 1965, guitarist George Harrison was introduced to the sitar, a stringed instrument that originated in the Indian subcontinent. The sitar solo Harrison added on Rubber Soul's "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" is believed to be the first time the instrument was featured on a Western pop recording.

That was just one classic moment on an album brimming maturity and innovation. Rubber Soul spawned classics such as "Drive My Car", "Nowhere Man" and "In My Life", the latter of which is considered one of the greatest songs of all time.

Source: yahoo.com/John Lembo

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Then he describes that, as the meditator “reduces the thoughts below mental-thinking level,” he will eventually arrive “at a very subtle level which is beyond all relative experience” (there, at the quiet bottom of the ocean he’s sketched).

“This,” he writes, “we will call Transcendental Consciousness.

“As most of us haven’t experienced this state before,” he writes, “the first few times, you don’t even know that you have reached this state, because it isn’t a relative experience, and there’s nothing to compare it to, but from the very beginning—you will start to feel very relaxed, and start to get more energy—happiness and intelligence because the ‘pure state of consciousness’ is the reservoir of energy, happiness, and intelligence—and it is the place where we have got it all from in the past, but then it was unconsciously, and the meditation is a way of tapping this great natural source of energy, and consciously arriving at this level.”

Around the time George passed away, in 2001, I was making my first inroads into meditation, discovering all the wonders therein, and I found in my mind some trace of George, looking as he’d looked during his discovering-Maharishi era (white kurta, aviator shades, cowboy mustache), saying, reassuringly, “See? We were on to something back then. And now you’re on to it, too.”

To have seen this admired and beloved figure making his way down his spiritual path, humbly, insistently, happily, was a form of validation.I was not wrong, or lost, or losing my moorings; I was retracing steps George Harrison had taken. It was as if he’d scrawled a message on a doorway: Keep going; this leads to a profound place.

This was, we might say, a form of action at a distance—of generosity at a distance.

Source: vanityfair.com/George Saunders

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There aren't that many accounts of John Lennon and Paul McCartney not agreeing on who wrote which parts of their songs. In fact, to a certain degree, it didn't matter — that's why the "Lennon-McCartney" songwriting name was established, since oftentimes it was hard to tell where one man's contribution ended and the other's began.

But for however synchronized Lennon and McCartney were, the reality is that two separate brains were at work when it came to their songwriting, and it did ultimately matter to each of them how those contributions were remembered.  "In My Life" from the Beatles' 1965 album Rubber Soul is a clear example of this.  One thing Lennon and McCartney did not disagree on was that "In My Life" originated with Lennon.

"'In My Life' started out as a bus journey from my house on 250 [sic] Menlove Avenue to town, mentioning every place I could remember," Lennon recalled to David Sheff in 1980. "And it was ridiculous. This is before even 'Penny Lane' was written and I had Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields, Tram Sheds – Tram Sheds are the depot just outside of Penny Lane – and it was the most boring sort of 'What I Did On My Holidays Bus Trip' song and it wasn't working at all. I cannot do this! I cannot do this! But then I laid back and these lyrics started coming to me about the places I remember."

It was then that McCartney came into the picture, as far as Lennon remembered it in a 1970 interview with Rolling Stone: "I think on 'Norwegian Wood' and 'In My Life' Paul helped with the middle eight, to give credit where it's due."

A decade later, Lennon doubled down on this memory when speaking with Sheff:

"Paul helped with the middle eight musically," he confirmed again. "But all lyrics written, signed, sealed and delivered. And it was, I think, my first real major piece of work. Up till then it had all been sort of glib and throwaway. And that was the first time I consciously put my literary part of myself into the lyric. Inspired by Kenneth Allsop, the British journalist, and Bob Dylan."

Source: ultimateclassicrock.com/Allison Rapp

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During a 1963 visit to St. Louis, George Harrison found a record he couldn't stop thinking about. He even imagined the Beatles recording it. But despite his enthusiasm, the song never made its way into the band's repertoire. Harrison would eventually get another chance with it — 24 years later.  It all stemmed from an early 1960s vacation.

“In 1963, the year before the Beatles first came to America, I took a trip to St. Louis to visit my sister, who was living there at the time,” Harrison wrote in The Beatles Anthology. “The whole Beatlemania thing had really begun in the U.K., and we’d had three or four hit singles.

“So while visiting my sister, I went around to all the music shops looking for new singles and especially albums that were really hard to find in Liverpool. And that’s where I finally found the James Ray album, If You’re Gonna Make a Fool of Somebody.”

In particular, the song that grabbed his attention most was “Got My Mind Set on You,” and Harrison thought it had the makings of a Beatles recording — despite one significant drawback.  All the latest guitar news, interviews, lessons, reviews, deals and more, direct to your inbox!

“It would have been great for the Beatles to cover, except it wasn’t really rock and roll,” he admitted. “It was trying to rock, but it sounded like it was produced by a jazz musician — it had all these squawky horns and stuff.” As Harrison later recalled, the song “stuck in my mind.” More than two decades passed before he finally revisited it while working on Cloud Nine, his 1987 comeback album after a lengthy break from recording.

Produced by Jeff Lynne, Cloud Nine found Harrison returning to a more electric guitar–driven sound. Revisiting Rudy Clark’s song, he stripped away the brass-heavy arrangement that had bothered him in the first place and gave it a contemporary rock treatment.

Source: guitarplayer.com/Phil Weller

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The Beatles owed a debt to R&B music, one of the genres that exerted the biggest influence on their music as they formulated their sound. It’s only fitting then that the group’s members repaid the debt with some of the songs they wrote, both with the band and after its breakup, that were covered by R&B artists.

We compiled a list of four of these cover versions. The Fab Four deserve credit for writing these outstanding tracks. And the artists also should be lauded for the way they reinvented the songs.
“Got To Get You Into My Life” by Earth, Wind & Fire

The Beatles never released “Got To Get You Into My Life” as a single, although the horn-drenched number certainly sounded like one. Paul McCartney wrote it as a clandestine ode to marijuana. The music was indebted to the Motown sound of the era. Earth, Wind & Fire recorded it on the soundtrack of the much-maligned Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band film that was released in 1978. They bravely reimagined the arrangement, turning the hook into a kind of jazzy scat. Al McKay brings some heft with a sizzling guitar solo, while Maurice White tears through the vocals of the verses. Released at the height of EWF’s popularity, the song soared to the Top 10.
“We Can Work It Out” by Stevie Wonder

The Beatles’ original version of “We Can Work It Out” is one of the group’s picture-perfect pop songs. There’s not a note that feels wasted or out of place. Because of its somewhat taut arrangement, tension accompanies the narrator’s urgent pleas for reconciliation. You leave the song wondering if they really can find common ground. When Stevie Wonder took hold of the song in 1970, he imbued it with a loose-limbed bass line and an ebullient harmonica solo. There are backing vocals urging on the narrator throughout the track. It projects a much more assured vibe than the Fab Four’s take. And audiences loved it, making it a Top 15 hit for Wonder.

Source: americansongwriter.com/Jim Beviglia

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“The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event” stars Barry Keoghan, Joseph Quinn and Harris Dickinson were spotted filming the iconic opening of the “A Hard Day’s Night” movie for the forthcoming film, per images via TMZ.

Directed by Richard Lester, the 1964 film followed the crew over two days as the band struggled to keep themselves and Paul McCartney’s mischievous grandfather in check while preparing for a live TV performance. One of the most notable moments — and the scene apparently being filmed — was a sequence of shots showing the three bandmembers running away from swarms of adoring fans.

Last month, the cast (plus Paul Mescal) were seen recreating the “Abbey Road” album cover for the multi-part biopic. Mescal stars as Paul McCartney, Quinn plays George Harrison, Barry Keoghan portrays Ringo Starr and Harris Dickinson plays John Lennon.

Each of the four films will focus on a different member of the band. “Each man has his own story, but together they are legendary,” reads the official logline.

In addition to the main bandmembners, other cast members include Saoirse Ronan as Linda McCartney, James Norton as Brian Epstein, Mia McKenna-Bruce as Maureen Starkey, Anna Sawai as Yoko Ono, Aimee Lou Wood as Pattie Boyd, Harry Lloyd as George Martin, David Morrissey as Jim McCartney, Leanne Best as Mimi Smith, Bobby Schofield as Neil Aspinall, Daniel Hoffmann-Gill as Mal Evans, Arthur Darvill as Derek Taylor and Adam Pally as Allen Klein.

Source: variety.com/Payton Turkeltaub

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