Beatles News
The "I'm Looking Through You" we know from 1965's Rubber Soul is not the "I'm Looking Through You" the Beatles first put together at EMI Studios in London.
The version we know is bouncy and deceptively joyful-sounding for a song about feeling your partner slipping away. But at first, Paul McCartney's lament for his failing relationship with actress Jane Asher was slower, bluesier and didn't have a middle eight section at all.
This first version was recorded on Oct. 24, 1965. Another one was made on Nov. 6, but again the Beatles were not satisfied with the results and so did it once more on Nov. 10 with overdubs on Nov. 11. This was the version that made the final Rubber Soul cut. (The original version was eventually released into the world on the 1996 Anthology 2 compilation.)
Why Did Paul McCartney Write 'I'm Looking Through You'?
The thing to remember about McCartney's five-year relationship with Asher is that she was already a public figure and had her own very established career by the time they began dating — she started out as a child actress in the early '50s and only gained momentum from there. In other words: Asher had been famous for longer than McCartney.
Though they had much in common, McCartney and Asher's power couple status was also a source of strain. Asher aimed not to give journalists at the time too much to work with, who "seemed to write anything, regardless of whether it was true or not," she recalled to The Independent in 2024.
Source:ultimateclassicrock.com/Allison Rapp
It’s another day at the office for Time Lord Giles Martin. He takes in his stride the one true crossing outside Abbey Road Studios and then its stairs, laid by Alexander the Great in 320BC. He leans against the oak door hewn from the Ark of the Covenant and lowers his eye to the laser scanner. The airlock sighs and sucks him inside.
This, give or take some overexcited fictional details, is the daily grind for the son of the Beatles’ record producer George Martin: the man who helped design the world as we hear it with its vastly expanded pop vocabulary, its studio-as-instrument concept and album-as-art-form culture. The Beatles’ greatest album of all (we think) is up for a remix. Art by Aresna Villanueva
Giles Martin’s digital remixes of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Abbey Road, the White Album, Let It Be and Revolver are history now, too. This year, the mission he has chosen to accept leads him down these storied corridors to The Greatest Beatles Album Ever.
“I’m probably the wrong person for this job,” he demurs as we settle in to dissect my possibly spurious claim. “I don’t really think about the whole thing when I’m working on it. I’ll listen to something like Norwegian Wood and, to be honest, I’ll just be thinking about the sound of that acoustic guitar and the voice.
Giles Martin.Alex Lake/C A Management
“I think I’m fairly singular-minded and I don’t really have the processing ability to go bigger. So I’m not thinking about the legacy.
Source: smh.com.au/Michael Dwyer
On this day (September 16) in 1963, the Beatles released “She Loves You” as a single in the United States. They released it in the United Kingdom in late August, and it became a massive hit, launching them to national stardom. That wasn’t the case in the United States, though. It received positive press but very little airplay. As a result, it failed to chart upon its initial release. It only became a hit after the band found popularity with American listeners.
“She Loves You” was the Beatles’ second consecutive No. 1 in the United Kingdom. Moreover, it became the best-selling single of the 1960s in their homeland. The “yeah, yeah, yeah” hook made the third-person love song endlessly catchy and helped them dominate the English pop market. Many cite “She Loves You” as the song that ushered in Beatlemania. In America, though, few people were interested in what the Fab Four had to say.
According to the Beatles Bible, the song’s lack of success in the United States may have been partially due to the label that released it. Capitol Records, their label’s American counterpart, refused to release the single. Vee Jay Records, which had released “Please Please Me” and “From Me to You,” also passed. Eventually, their manager, Brian Epstein, struck a deal with Swan Records. The small label’s limited distribution meant that only a handful of the most influential radio stations in the country picked it up.
The Beatles Finally Find American Success
“She Loves You” flopped upon its initial American release. Then, it became their gateway to international fame.
The Jack Paar Program aired footage of the Beatles playing “She Loves You” in January 1964. This caught American audiences’ attention. A month later, on February 9, they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time. By then, Beatlemania had already begun to take hold in the States.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Clayton Edwards
When John Lennon was murdered outside his home in New York City in 1980, the shock and grief was felt worldwide. Sometimes, when a public figure is so large and universal, it's hard to remember that he was also a person with loved ones who mourned him even more that fans did around the world. Paul McCartney was one of them. When Lennon died, The Beatles had been broken up for ten years, and he and McCartney's bitter feud was fresh in people's minds. So, a lot of people speculated that there was no love lost between them.
But people didn't know everything that went on behind the scenes. In reality, the former bandmates had reconciled in the mid-'70s, and Lennon's tragic death was a huge blow for McCartney. No matter what happened between them, they had been best friends since they were teenagers, had created the greatest band in the world together, and their bond was one that transcended any argument or feud. And this song is proof of that. Paul McCartney's Love Song to John Lennon.
John Lennon died on December 8, 1980, and immediately after he heard the tragic news, Paul McCartney locked himself in his studio. By the time he came out, reporters were surrounding him, eager to get his reaction. They immediately asked him what he was doing in the studio, and he said he just "didn't want to sit at home."
Source: collider.com/Val Barone
While My Guitar Gently Weeps is one of the Beatles' most enduring classics, but it had a rocky start. Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Ringo Starr weren't all that keen on George Harrison's opus. It took a special guest to help get things off the ground.
Not only was it one of the best songs Harrison ever wrote, it was one of the greatest Beatles songs full stop, and a standout inclusion on the White Album.
During the record's studio sessions, though, Harrison's bandmates didn't care too much for the tune. It made tracking the song difficult. At one point, they abandoned the song altogether, only to later start over again.
In the February 2001 issue of Total Guitar, which featured a long-lost interview with Harrison conducted in the 1990s, the Beatle looked back on the frustrating experience.
"We'd be in a recording situation, churning through all this Lennon/McCartney, Lennon McCartney, Lennon/McCartney! Then I'd say, 'Can we do one of these?'" he said.
"When we actually started recording While My Guitar Gently Weeps it was just me playing the acoustic guitar and singing it and nobody was interested. Well, Ringo probably was, but John and Paul weren't.
"When I went home that night I was really disappointed, because I thought, 'Well, this is really quite a good song, it's not as if it's shitty!'"
Source: yahoo.com/Matt Owen
There’s a best and worst song on virtually every album out there. But picking the best and worst from a band like The Beatles is no easy task. If you don’t agree with my rankings of songs from the Fab Four’s “Beatlemania” era, you’re probably not alone. This list is extremely subjective to taste, forewarning!
Best Song on ‘Please Please Me’ (1963) — “I Saw Her Standing There”
This song is still so gorgeous after all these years. It’s pretty shocking that Paul McCartney and John Lennon wrote this rock and roll banger at such a young age. “I Want To Hold Your Hand” was just on the cusp of taking this spot, but I had to go with the former for nostalgia’s sake.
Worst Song on ‘Please Please Me’ (1963) — “There’s A Place”
This was an easy entry, considering how many people really don’t like this particular track. Lennon’s harmonica is just too shrill for me, personally.
Best Song on ‘With The Beatles’ (1963) — “All My Loving”
An obvious choice! “All My Loving” is an example of one of McCartney’s best early-career songwriting efforts. Even Lennon said the song was “a damn good piece of work” in his 1980 Playboy interview.
Worst Song on ‘With The Beatles’ (1963) — “Devil In Her Heart”
With The Beatles really did have a ton of great songs, so picking the worst came down to selecting the one song I completely forgot about from that album.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Em Casalena
The Beatles released the 1963 hit song “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which not only became one of the band’s defining songs but was also ranked among Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Based on the ranking released by the publication, the list celebrates songs widely regarded for their lasting impact and influence on music.
With this, The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” ranked at No. 15, which the publication described as “an irresistibly erotic come-on framed as a chaste, bashful request.”
Continuing the song’s legacy, Rolling Stone later released a separate list highlighting the 100 Greatest Beatles Songs, with “I Want to Hold Your Hand” landing at No. 2.
Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the duo created what would become one of the band’s most iconic songs at Jane Asher’s house, where McCartney’s then-girlfriend lived.
“We wrote a lot of stuff together, one on one, eyeball to eyeball,” the late John Lennon told Playboy magazine in 1980, as cited by Performing Songwriter, adding, “Like in ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ I remember when we got the chord that made the song.”
Source: parade.com/Geca Flores
I like how completely baffled John Lennon is by the rules of American football here. It doesn’t make any sense to me either, and I’m American.
On December 9th, 1974, Lennon somehow found himself at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum watching the Los Angeles Rams play the Washington Redskins in front of something like 87,000 people. He hadn’t planned some grand promotional appearance, but Frank Gifford had bumped into him earlier that day at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, offered him tickets to the game and, much to Gifford’s surprise, Lennon actually showed up.
This being Monday Night Football in the 1970s, there were celebrities everywhere. California governor and future president Ronald Reagan was there too, and in one of those wonderfully strange combinations of famous people that could only have happened in the ’70s, Reagan apparently spent part of the evening explaining the rules of football to John Lennon.
I’d have paid good money to listen in on that conversation.
Eventually, Lennon was persuaded into the ABC commentary booth for a quick chat with Howard Cosell, whom he’d already met during a lengthy radio interview a couple of months earlier. Cosell asks him for his first impressions of the spectacle and Lennon seems genuinely blown away by the whole thing.
“It’s an amazing event and sight,” he tells him. “It makes rock concerts look like tea parties.”
The game itself? Not quite so straightforward.
Lennon admits he’s been trying to follow what’s happening but can’t understand “why half the team was off and half the team was on”, which seems a perfectly reasonable question to me. Cosell asks him to compare it with soccer and rugby, and Lennon decides rugby is probably the closest relative, although he’s disappointed by the lack of a proper scrum where, as he puts it, “both teams really punch each other”.
Source: dangerousminds.net/Richard Metzger
Although Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder’s most famous collaboration was the 1982 transatlantic #1 hit “Ebony and Ivory,” the relationship between two of music’s greatest ever minds spans nearly the entirety the length of their careers.
In February 1966, a 15-year-old Wonder, transitioning from the child prodigy label of “Little Stevie Wonder” to one of Motown’s most exciting pop acts, told NME that meeting McCartney, then a 23-year-old bassist and co-lead vocalist and songwriter for The Beatles, two years into the Fab Four’s cultural dominance of American and global music, was one of the highlights of his young career.
“When on tour, I have to write essays about the places I visit,” the teenage Wonder told the publication (via Beatle Radio). “In the essay I’ll be writing when I get back I’ll certainly include my meeting with Paul McCartney. I met him in the Scotch Of St James club. He’s a really swinging guy, the only Beatle I’ve met.”
For McCartney, the feeling was very much reciprocated, with a History article writing that during his time as a Beatle, and likely prior, and all the way through his early post-breakup career as the frontman for his semi-solo project, Paul McCartney and Wings, McCartney “had been a fan of Stevie Wonder’s for many years before they first met.”
Source: mensjournal.com/Bethany Gemmell
The Beatles have unveiled a previously unheard alternate take of “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)”.
Released today by UMG and Apple Corps Ltd., “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) (Second Version – Take 2)” features on the forthcoming expanded edition of the band’s 1965 album Rubber Soul, due on October 2.
The first version of what was then called ‘This Bird Has Flown’ was recorded during the first day of sessions for Rubber Soul and featured George Harrison’s new discovery, the sitar. The band were not happy with this version, so nine days later they taped three more performances.
On take two, track one featured John Lennon’s acoustic guitar, Paul McCartney’s bass, Ringo Starr on drums and George playing drone notes on sitar. George added more sitar on tracks two and three, with John and Paul’s vocals also recorded on track three. Rather than starting with an instrumental version of the verse melody, as the final version does, this arrangement opens with double-tracked sitar playing the tune of the bridge section.
The release follows the recent unveiling of “Michelle (Take 1)” and “Day Tripper (Songwriting Work Tape)”.
The collection will be available in a range of formats, including standard 1CD and 1LP editions, 2CD and 2LP deluxe editions, 4CD and 5LP Super Deluxe box sets and a Blu-ray edition featuring the new Dolby Atmos mix, high-resolution stereo audio and promotional films for “Day Tripper” and “We Can Work It Out”. Limited-edition orange vinyl and Zoetrope vinyl editions will also be available.V
Source: uncut.co.uk/Michael Bonner
