Beatles News
In 1973, John Lennon and Yoko Ono temporarily separated, and he began dating the couple’s assistant, May Pang. Over the course of their relationship, she witnessed Lennon’s relationships with his former Beatles bandmates. She was there for some explosive fights, including one between Lennon and George Harrison. She explained that the ferocity of Harrison’s anger was frightening, even to Lennon.
After separating from Ono in 1973, Lennon moved out of the couple’s apartment. Ono has said that the separation, and Lennon’s subsequent relationship with Pang, did not hurt her.
“The affair was not something that was hurtful to me,” Ono told The Telegraph in 2012. “I needed a rest. I needed space.”
Lennon refers to the separation period as his “Lost Weekend,” though, in reality, it lasted roughly 18 months. While he was creatively productive, he also drank heavily and used drugs, sometimes leading to destructive behavior. During this time, he was involved with Pang.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney songs inspired Taylor Swift’s “Lover.” Swift discussed how Paul’s music regularly inspires her in the studio.
“Lover” lasted a long time on the charts in the United States.
Taylor Swift‘s “Lover” took inspiration from the instrumentation of Paul McCartney songs. Subsequently, producer Jack Antonoff revealed what he thought about the track’s bassline. Notably, the song performed differently in the United States and the United Kingdom.During a 2019 interview with Rolling Stone, a journalist told Swift her album Lover sounded like independent music. “That’s amazing, thank you,” she replied. “It’s definitely a quirky record. With this album, I felt like I sort of gave myself permission to revisit older themes that I used to write about, maybe look at them with fresh eyes.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison‘s son, Dhani, could’ve had his father’s fellow Beatle, Ringo Starr, teach him the drums. If you want to learn, you have to learn from the best. However, it didn’t exactly go to plan.
When Dhani was little, George never pushed music or his famous band on him. However, he didn’t exactly hide what he did for a living, either. All Dhani knew was that his father “pushed buttons” for a living, which was what George and his wife, Olivia, wanted. They tried raising him out of the spotlight.
When his father’s famous friends came to call, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Dhani would sit with them for hours in the recording studio as they made songs.
“I hung out with my parents. I was always trying to be with the big kids, and the big kids at my house were like (ELO frontman) Jeff Lynne,” Dhani told Daily Mail. “You’d come home and it was like, ‘Bob Dylan’s here.’ It’s hard to get a bit of perspective on, like, ‘How did your school test go today?'”
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
Rare photos of The Beatles performing in their early days at Liverpool's Cavern Club have been discovered.
The images were taken in 1961, a year before their debut single Love Me Do was released.
The photos show Sir Paul McCartney and John Lennon singing, with George Harrison on guitar and a partly-obscured original drummer Pete Best.
Historian Mark Lewisohn described them as "whippet-thin under-nourished lads" following their tour to Germany.
The band, who were then aged between 18 and 20, had recently returned from performing in Hamburg, where they had been "slogging 500 stage hours in 90 days", he said.
"So slender has this marathon made them, it's as if their heads and bodies are stranger.
Source: BBC News
Ringo Starr has fond memories of making The Beatles’ Abbey Road despite the band’s status as the time. Intraband fighting had the Fab Four on the verge of shattering for good, but the group pulled together and made a rare album — one whose reputation seems to continue growing nearly 55 years later. Ringo said some of his strongest memories from making Abbey Road are of the band playing together again, but he admitted he has a more selfish reason for loving those sessions.Ringo once called “Rain” a weird Beatles song because he never played a beat like that. He also laid down a performance for the ages on “Tomorrow Never Knows,” but Abbey Road was Ringo’s shining moment.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
Eric Idle said he needed to see George Harrison on his deathbed in 2001. Otherwise, he would’ve regretted not seeing his friend one last time. The comedian wasn’t George’s only friend who felt that way.
Idle and George became friends in the 1970s. They met at a Monty Python and the Holy Grail screening, smoked pot in the projection room, went to dinner, then the recording studio, and proceeded to talk for the next 48 hours. They bonded over their similar roles in their respective groups.
Idle said it was love at first sight between them. Later, George helped Idle and Monty Python produce Life of Brian, allowing the friends to collaborate. The pair remained friends who were there for each other. After George’s 1999 home invasion, Idle was at his side immediately.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison said he didn’t enjoy his singing in The Beatles. He didn’t sing too much because John Lennon and Paul McCartney hardly allowed him to come forward with his songs. However, George’s singing wasn’t as bad as he thought. He was often overly critical of himself.
When George was a teenager, John Lennon and Paul McCartney asked him to join The Quarryman, later The Beatles. Like all teenage boys, George’s voice was changing, getting deeper. When The Beatles started their residency in Hamburg, Germany, George was still only 17 years old.
During the band’s all-night performances, John, Paul, and George sang anything and everything to get an audience to stick around. Then, when they started their residency at The Cavern Club, the band continued to be pros on stage.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
Ringo Starr’s great drumming and affable personality earned him a place in the musical pantheon, but even legends misfire from time to time. On his third album Ringo, Starr included a cover of the song “You’re Sixteen.” The content of this song wasn’t as glaringly problematic when it was released, but the notion of an adult man signing about the beauty of an adolescent girl only gets creepier with time. The incorporation of a young Carrie Fisher into the promotion of the song is also uncomfortable, given the significant difference in age between her and Starr. Released in 1973, Ringo is a notable record for several reasons. It is one of the few occasions where all four of the Beatles collaborated on the same project, albeit on different songs. It was also the commercial peak of Starr’s solo career.
Source: cheatsheet.com
George Harrison said The Rutles “liberated” him from The Beatles‘ legacy. For most of his solo career, George had to deal with being tied to his famous former band. He grew sick of it fast.
However, the parody helped George come to terms with The Beatles.
In 1975, Eric Idle and Neil Innes created a sketch that followed a fictional band based on The Beatles called The Rutles. The sketch appeared on Idle’s BBC television series Rutland Weekend Television later that year. Then, the fake band became real when they recorded Beatle-y songs for an album called The Rutland Weekend Songbook.
In 1976, Idle played clips of The Rutles on SNL. The producer of the late-night comedy show, Lorne Michaels, liked the sketch and agreed to produce The Rutles‘ movie, All You Need Is Cash, with Idle. The Rutles line-up included Ron Nasty (Innes), Dirk McQuickly (Idle), Stig O’Hara (Ricky Fataar), and Barry Wom (John Halsey).
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
When the Beatles started work on their masterpiece Revolver, in April 1966, they knew they were after the sound of the future. And they got there on the very first day of the sessions, with the wildly experimental buzz of “Tomorrow Never Knows (Take 1).” The psychedelic outtake was released on Friday and it’s a taste of the new Super Deluxe Edition of Revolver, which arrives on October 28. The new edition tells the story of how the Beatles took their gigantic creative leap into the unknown. As producer Giles Martin says, “It’s the Beatles punching their way out of a bag. They’re saying, ‘We’re no longer going to be constrained by anything.’”
Source: Rob Sheffield/yahoo.com