On June 1, 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded the anti-war tune “Give Peace A Chance”. The song would be officially released a few days later, but the scenario surrounding the recording of the song is quite interesting. And if you’re a diehard Lennon fan, you probably know the story quite well.

Though the song itself is an uplifting tune against violence, some listeners found the song (as well as its recording process) to be in poor taste. The Story Behind the Recording of “Give Peace a Chance”

“Give Peace A Chance” was originally written by John Lennon alone, though it was credited to Lennon–McCartney. The tune was written while Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, staged their famous “bed-in” honeymoon in Montreal, Canada. This, specifically, is where the controversy comes in.

The title of the song came from a phrase that Lennon would say when asked by reporters what the purpose of the bed-in was: “Just give peace a chance.” Fans of Lennon thought that the stunt, which involved the pair simply sitting in bed on two separate occasions for about a week at a time, was a solid nonviolent protest against the Vietnam War. Many critics at the time called the song that came from the stunt “clever.”

Source: americansongwriter.com/Em Casalena

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The 82-year-old singer-songwriter found fame in the 1960s and has gone on to release a number of hits including Live and Let Die and Let It Be. Now, Paul works as the lead patron of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA).

In his role, the Wings frontman still visits the educational facility to support the students on their graduation day. Another person who works at LIPA is David Stark who shared with The Mirror US Paul's commitment to the students.

"For the last 20 years I've been involved with LIPA, which Paul is the patron of, and he was instrumental in getting that off the ground in the early 90s," Stark explained.  He continued, "They have the graduation day every year in July and I give out the same writing advice every year. And Paul's always there. So he makes a big effort."

‌Paul also holds one-on-one sessions with the songwriting students before their graduation, according to Stark. He explained, "He'll sit down with each of them for half an hour or so to talk about their songs. He's great. He really is."

He continued, "He makes a big effort and I'm very proud to work with him." Stark has met Paul several times and shared what he's really like when the cameras aren't on him.

"I met him many times and he's just a great guy," Stark told us. "And, you know, not all people realize that he does all this on the side and he makes a big effort."

 He continued, "He's very open. He'll talk. He's happy to talk to students or kids or anybody. He's very encouraging. He really is. And, you know, he's going to be 83 in June. That's amazing."

Paul isn't the only member of The Beatles Stark has connections to. Shortly after the death of John Lennon, he met the singer's aunt, Mimi Smith. Recalling his meeting with Mimi, Stark told us, "I really got on with her."

Source: themirror.com/Scarlett O'Toole

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He explained how they'd been introduced by a mutual friend who was visiting Mimi at the time. Stark remembered clearly what he and Mimi talked about, with John's aunt telling him everything about the musician's early life.

"She's telling me everything about John and his early life. You know, how he was wise and gabby when he was a kid," he explained. Mimi also showed Stark all of John's old school exercise books, as well as his school tie and cap.

Artwork from more than 100 records will be displayed at Lincoln Castle from Thursday 5 June to Sunday 24 August.

They will include The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Duran Duran's Rio, and Elvis Presley's eponymous debut album from 1956.

The exhibition, called Playback: Art of the Album Sleeve, will also include contributions from some of the designers behind the covers.

Malcolm Garrett, who created covers for Buzzcocks, Duran Duran and Peter Gabriel, and Mark Farrow, the man behind sleeves for the Pet Shop Boys, is among the artists who have taken part in a film about their inspirations.

Kimberley Vickers, the castle's general manager, said: "Album art is so much more than packaging – these iconic covers have become era-defining images that have shaped popular culture."

The exhibition, which will be on display in the Victorian prison at the castle, will be free for annual pass holders and included in the price of a day ticket.

Source: Paul Johnson/bbc.com

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On this day in 1967, The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a boundary-pushing record that redefined what a rock album could be. With psychedelic sounds, orchestral arrangements and a concept-driven structure, Sgt. Pepper’s quickly climbed to No. 1 on the charts and is now widely considered one of the most influential albums of all time.

Another transformative moment came on June 1, 1974, when Dr. Henry Heimlich first published details of his abdominal thrust technique — now known as the Heimlich maneuver — in the journal Emergency Medicine. The method, which helps choking victims by dislodging food from the airway, has since been credited with saving thousands of lives. June 1 has since been recognized as National Heimlich Maneuver Day.

June 1 also marks World Milk Day, created by the United Nations in 2001 to recognize the importance of milk in global nutrition. The day is now celebrated in more than 80 countries, highlighting the role of dairy in agriculture, health and economic development.

If that’s not enough, history buffs might raise a glass of Scotch today in honor of a 1495 entry in Scottish records, marking the first known written reference to whisky, according to the History Channel. A monk named John Cor was commissioned to make “aqua vitae” — the water of life — at Lindores Abbey.

Source: cleveland.com/Molly Walsh

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Just under six decades ago, on May 30, 1968, the Beatles went into the studio to begin recording their eponymous “White Album,” a double-album full of career-defining hits but one that did not come without its fair share of regrets from those involved, including producer George Martin and musicians Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney. For as creative and inspired as the album was, the dynamics in the studio were fraught at best. The Fab Four was fast approaching the end.

Seemingly just as quickly as they burst onto the scene several years earlier, the Beatles seemed to be departing from their time as one of the greatest, most popular rock bands in the world in a similarly impressive blaze of glory. As for Martin’s regrets? Starr posed an interesting solution that was just as goofy and lighthearted as one might expect from the affable percussionist.
George Martin Regretted This Aspect Of The White Album

The Beatles’ 1968 “White Album” is a massive beast of a record. The double album release featured cuts like “Blackbird,” “Helter Skelter,” “Happiness is a Warm Gun,” “Rocky Raccoon,” and many, many more. While not all 30 tracks would become the band’s most popular songs, it was a particularly impressive collection of writing styles, creative inspiration, and musical arrangements. But producer George Martin had his doubts about including that many tracks at one time.

“I thought we should probably have made a very, very good single album rather than a double,” he said in Anthology. “But they insisted. I think it could have been made fantastically good if it had been compressed a bit and condensed. A lot of people I know think it’s still the best album they made. I later learned that by recording all those songs, they were getting rid of their contact with EMI more quickly.”

Drummer Ringo Starr had a laughable solution to Martin’s qualms with the album: “I agree that we should have put it out as two separate albums,” Starr said. “The ‘White’ and ‘Whiter’ albums.” In a testament to the different wavelengths the band was operating on at the time, not everyone agreed that there was too much on the double record. (We’d wager a bet that you can guess which try-hard Beatle was okay with the lengthy tracklist.)

Source: americansongwriter.com/Melanie Davis

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John Lennon performs on the keyboard during "One To One", a charity concert to benefit mentally challenged children at Madison Square Garden, Aug. 30, 1972, New York. Greene County native Gary Van Scyoc was in the band that backed Lennon at the concert.

Gary Van Scyoc graduated from Waynesburg High School in 1964, just a few months after the Beatles exploded in America’s consciousness and made being a musician one of the coolest jobs around.

As “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You” were blasting out of thousands of transistor radios, Van Scyoc had no way of imagining that in just a handful of years he’d be the one playing bass alongside John Lennon and not Paul McCartney, Lennon’s fellow Beatle and songwriting collaborator.

“It was just so cool to work with John,” Van Scyoc recalled during a recent phone conversation from his home in the Poconos. “He never told me one thing to play, I had total freedom.”

Van Scyoc worked with Lennon and Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono, thanks to being a member of the New York band Elephant’s Memory. The group mixed radicalism and “a rough sound,” according to a review that appeared in The New York Times in July 1971. It was shortly after that review appeared that Lennon and Ono relocated to New York and immersed themselves in the cauldron of radical politics and avant-garde art that was bubbling in Greenwich Village. They saw Elephant’s Memory play at Max’s Kansas City, what was then one of New York’s hottest nightspots, and invited them to work with them.

Source: heraldstandard.com/Brad Hundt

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