Beatles News
In 1963, The Beatles released “Twist And Shout”, a song that would become one of their biggest hits. Written by Phil Medley and Bert Russell, “Twist And Shout” is on both Introducing…The Beatles, their first record in the United States, and Please Please Me, The Beatles’ debut record released in the United Kingdom.
Before The Beatles recorded “Twist And Shout”, it was first released by R&B group, The Top Notes in 1961. One year later, The Isley Brothers released “Twist And Shout”, a version that inspired The Beatles to put their own spin on the song. Unfortunately, singer John Lennon was ill when they recorded “Twist And Shout”, making it a challenge for him in the studio.
Lennon was already suffering from a cold when The Beatles went in to record “Twist And Shout”. Struggling with a sore throat, The Beatles were at the end of a 12-hour studio session when they decided to record “Twist And Shout”.
“Someone suggested they do ‘Twist and Shout’ with John taking the lead vocal,” studio engineer Norman Smith recalls. “But by this time, all their throats were sore; it was 12 hours since we had started working. John’s, in particular, was almost completely gone so we really had to get it right the first time. The Beatles on the studio floor and us in the control room.
“John sucked a couple more Zubes,” he adds,” referring to a type of throat lozenges, “had a bit of a gargle with milk and away we went.”
What Happened After The Beatles Recorded “Twist And Shout”. By the end of the recording session, Lennon was reportedly so sick that he sang without his shirt on. The Beatles did two takes of “Twist And Shout”, using the first one.
“Twist And Shout” became a No. 1 hit for The Beatles. But the song, although a massive hit for the group, wasn’t as big as some of their other hits. The Beatles dominated 16 consecutive weeks in the No. 1 spot on the charts in 1964. They spent eight weeks in the top spot with “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, followed by two weeks with “She Loves You”, one week of “Twist And Shout”, and five weeks with “Can’t Buy Me Love”.
Later in 1964, The Beatles returned to the top spot for one week, with “Love Me Do”, followed by three weeks with their “A Hard Day’s Night” single. At the end of 1964, The Beatles spent one week at No. 1, with “I Feel Fine”.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Gayle Thompson
For Paul McCartney, songwriting isn’t only a job, a craft and an emotional outlet. It’s a compulsion and a craving.
“People say, ‘Well, why do you still write songs?’ And it’s just because I love it. I’m addicted,” he said in an interview at Boulevard Carroll, a warren of recording and rehearsal studios on Manhattan’s Far West Side, where McCartney, 83, had just wrapped up an afternoon of band practice for the season finale of “Saturday Night Live.” “Out of a black hole comes forth milk and honey. And it’s so great, the feeling.”
Prolific as he has been — through the Beatles, Wings and solo albums — McCartney doesn’t follow any songwriting discipline or routine. “I’ll just be somewhere, and with some time to spare, and my guitar will be there, or I’ll be near a piano. And the urge will take me,” he said. “Whenever I’ve hit something, it’s just like, ooh, wow. It’s a great feeling. You know, the whole creative thing is a great thing. I say it beats working.”
Even for a rehearsal, McCartney was nattily dressed. He sported a blue jacket, a black shirt with pink pin dots, black pants, white-soled shoes like karate slippers and socks with a psychedelic design of blue bubbles below a bright yellow stripe.
A few days afterward, McCartney would perform on “S.N.L.," playing old and new songs, including “Days We Left Behind” from his new album, “The Boys of Dungeon Lane.” Then, five days later, McCartney was the surprise final guest on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” onstage at the Ed Sullivan Theater, where the Beatles made their North American debut in 1964. As a musical finale for Colbert, he sang the Beatles’ “Hello Goodbye.”
In person, McCartney carries his six decades of fame with extraordinary grace. He’s genial and unpretentious, proud but not arrogant and still amazed and delighted at his life as a musician. “I wonder these days at how I ended up as a songwriter,” he mused. “Because, you know, I’m just some kid who went to school, went to the careers master who said to me, you know, ‘You haven’t got qualifications and, there’s not … I don’t see a great future for you.’
“So I had to take that and just sort of think, ‘Sod you — I’m gonna do something.’ And it made me work for success harder, because I wasn’t supposed to be successful. So writing songs was one of the great things about my growing up.”
The first song he wrote was a rockabilly-flavored tune, “I Lost My Little Girl.” McCartney recalled, “Someone pointed out to me later, ‘That was about you losing your mum.’ I wrote it at about 14, 15 years old, and she had died quite recently.” Although the Beatles didn’t record the song, McCartney would later unveil it in the 1970s with Wings. “This is an interesting thing about songs,” he said. “Without knowing it, you’re delving into stuff that maybe would be difficult to talk about.”
Source: nytimes.com/Jon Pareles
Paul McCartney has finally made the admission all Beatles fans have been waiting for – that the quartet are the greatest band across the universe.
The musician, 83, has always modestly claimed that the best singer-songwriters of all time were crooning duo The Everly Brothers, whose songs included “Cathy’s Clown” and “All I Have to Do is Dream”.
However, in a TikTok Q&A interview ahead of his new record, McCartney revealed he feels fine saying The Beatles – made up of McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr – probably pip them to the post.
“It is phenomenal, it is really phenomenal,” he said of the band’s stratospheric success.
“When we started out, we were just kids, and rock and roll was just really coming in, and we thought, ‘If we’re lucky, we’ve got a couple of years’ – that’s how long people normally lasted. They couldn’t really sustain much more after that.“
He said he only expected their music would be played for “maybe five years max”, adding: “Then that became 10, and we were kind of still going and the scene’s still there. Then it became 20, then 30, and now it’s right up there. It’s great, it is a lovely feeling.”
McCartney said he enjoys hearing people tell him their kids love The Beatles.
“That’s something, you know, because you can’t indoctrinate [kids], they just either like it or they don’t. I think The Beatles were the greatest band ever. I’m a fan.”
McCartney once named Don and Phil Everly as the musicians who inspired him and Lennon the most, stating: “To this day, I just think they’re the greatest. And they were different.
Source: the-independent.com/Jacob Stolworthy
In the wake of his 2016 death, Prince left behind an enviable vault containing thousands of unreleased songs, most of which will likely never see the light of day. While the late musician’s estate has shared a few selections from the collection over the years, there’s one in particular that Paul McCartney is hoping they’ll come around to releasing: a cover Prince recorded of the Beatles‘ Let It Be single, “The Long and Winding Road.”
“I was with some guy couple of years ago, so it was after Prince had died, and this guy said, ‘Have you heard Prince do ‘Long and Winding Road?'” McCartney said on BBC Radio 2’s Tracks of My Years. “I said, ‘Well, no, that’s one of my songs. I don’t think he ever did it.’ He said, ‘Well, he did. He did it in rehearsal. He was rehearsing it for something.’ So, he said, ‘I’ll send it to you if you want.’ He sent it to me and it’s really great.”
The guy, McCartney believes, was a personal photographer for Prince. He described the recording as “kind of rocky,” adding, “He plays some really good guitar on it.” McCartney proposed the idea of asking the musician’s estate about what can be done with the hidden recording. “I could make it into something really good,” he said.
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While the pair didn’t know each other well, McCartney recognized an undeniable talent in Prince. “He took a lot from [Jimi] Hendrix, but he was a great player. If you watch him play, he’s got that sort of style. Bow! It’s just there’s something about it. You know he knows that instrument,” McCartney said, later adding, “He’s a special guy. It’s so sad these people, you know, suddenly he’s not here, and it always makes me wish that I’d known him better and that I could sort of say, ‘Hey, man, come on. What’s going on?’ It’s such a shame because there’s such talents.”
Source: rollingstone.com/Larisha Paul
With Paul McCartney releasing his first solo album in over five years, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, and the Beatles’ four-film biopic’s main cast already announced, it seems only natural that the actor who’s transforming into Macca – Paul Mescal – had a chat with the legend about his songwriting process. And luckily for the rest of us, it was captured on camera.
“I teach some kids up in my old school in Liverpool, and that's like the first thing [they ask]. I don't know how to do this, which is not very inspiring. I haven’t got a formula,” McCartney tells Mescal.
“They used to ask me and John [Lennon], ‘How’d you do it? Who writes the music, who writes the words?’ I don’t know. To me, I think any story or song you’re gonna do, it’s gotta involve memory. With the Beatles, we always tried to write something different.”
Lennon still serves as a source of inspiration for McCartney – especially considering his upcoming album turns a lens inward and revisits the formative years that not only shaped his own life but the very foundation of the Beatles.
“I ran into this guy called John Lennon, and he was kind of fighting life,” he reminisces of his collaborator., whose first single, Love Me Do, was released in 1962.
“He'd had a lot of trouble. His dad had left home, his mom had got run over… so he was putting up a shield, so he's very witty, very biting. And then when it came to writing, that kind of relationship stayed there.
Source: guitarworld.com/Janelle Borg
Imbuing spiritual philosophy into music was a practice George Harrison started back when he was still a mop-topped Beatle with tracks like “Within You Without You” and “I Me Mine”, so it’s no surprise that he continued this songwriting tradition into his solo career. In fact, two of his first major wins as a solo artist were spiritual numbers, one of which he later referred to as a “prayer and personal statement.”
For many folks, their minds might wander to Harrison’s first No. 1 hit post-Beatles, “My Sweet Lord”. The 1970 chart-topper sounds like a word-for-word prayer, right down to the “hallelujah” refrains. But the one Harrison felt was an even stronger impression of his spiritual state was his second No. 1: the 1973 track “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)” from Living In The Material World.
Whereas “My Sweet Lord” was adoring and reverent, “Give Me Love”, as the title would suggest, was more about his hopes and immaterial desires. “Give me love, give me peace on earth, give me light, give me life,” the song begins. “Keep me from birth, give me hope, help me cope with this heavy load.” George Harrison Called “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)” His Personal Statement.
No two songs ever come into being in the same way. George Harrison sat with some songs for years, whether because he was still revising them or because his Beatles bandmates rejected them as a Fab Four tune (often a mix of both). Songs like “Isn’t It A Pity” spent years incubating before Harrison released it on All Things Must Pass, his solo debut. But “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)” was notably different.
“Sometimes you open your mouth, and you don’t know what you are going to say,” Harrison wrote in I Me Mine. “And whatever comes out is the starting point. If that happens, and you are lucky, it can usually be turned into a song. This song is a prayer and personal statement between me, the Lord, and whoever likes it.”
Chart performance would indicate that there were plenty of folks who liked it. “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)” topped the charts on the Billboard Hot 100. It also hit the Top 10 in Harrison’s native United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Denmark, New Zealand, and Norway.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Melanie Davis
Pattie Boyd says George Harrison once got upset that she was on the cover of a magazine without him
On a recent podcast, Boyd spoke about whether intense publicity during the height of The Beatles' success affected their marriage
"He couldn't believe that they would put me on the paper and not him," Boyd said of her former husband
Pattie Boyd is opening up about her relationship with The Beatles' George Harrison — and how the late musician once got "jealous" of her own publicity.
The model and photographer, 82, appeared on a recent episode of the podcast Miss O’Dell: Abbey Road to Tulsa Time, hosted by Chris O’Dell. On the podcast, Boyd spoke about whether intense publicity during the height of The Beatles' success affected their marriage.
"I know George was rather upset one time when I was on the cover of one of the trashy newspapers, you know, because I was wearing whatever I was wearing — something mad — and he couldn't believe that they would put me on the paper and not him," Boyd said.
She added: "Jealousy comes in many, many different forms. It's very odd."
Boyd first met Harrison in 1964, on the set of A Hard Day's Night. The pair married in 1966, but their relationship eventually came to an end, and their divorce was finalized in 1977.
Source: people.com/Virginia Chamlee
Paul McCartney sat down with Paul Mescal, the actor who portrays him in the upcoming films about the Beatles, to discuss his new album.
The two Pauls sat down “In Conversation” for an exclusive short film posted by Amazon. In the 10-minute chat in the same restaurant the album trailer was filmed, the rocker and the actor talked about the nostalgic The Boys of Dungeon Lane.
“How do you feel about being interviewed?” Mescal asked McCartney.
“It depends if I like the person. Which is where we’re running into a problem already,” McCartney joked. “No, I find if I like who I’m being interviewed by, it comes easy.”
Mescal asked McCartney about his songwriting process on The Boys of Dungeon Lane, which features lyrics made up of memories but still “in the present tense.”
“I haven’t got a formula,” McCartney said. “They used to ask me and John [Lennon], ‘How’d you do it? Who writes the music, who writes the words?’ I don’t know. To me, I think any story or song you’re gonna do, it’s gotta involve memory. With the Beatles, we always tried to write something different.”
Mescal then questioned McCartney about new album songs like “Lost Horizon” and “Salesman Saint,” a song written about McCartney’s parents.
“I often remember that my mom and dad had me in World War 2. I’ve always known that growing up, but at certain point you go ‘Wow,” McCartney said. “It occurred to me that it’d be good to just put down some stuff about them carrying on through whatever they had to put up with.”
Source: rollingstone.com/Daniel Kreps
The rock legend in the autumn of their years who chooses to release a new album is well advised to get themselves an angle. If the music that made you legendary was written and recorded long ago – and is highly unlikely to be displaced in the public’s affections by anything you do now – it’s good to have something that suggests a sense of purpose, beyond just adding to an already vast back catalogue for the sake of it.
We’ve recently seen it with Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways, rooted in its jawdropping 17-minute survey of American political history, Murder Most Foul; and with Bruce Springsteen’s Only the Strong Survive, with its canny covers of soul and R&B classics. And an angle is clearly something that has occurred to Paul McCartney, too. From its title referencing a road in the suburb of Liverpool where McCartney spent his early childhood, to the circumstances of its launch – the first single Days We Left Behind was premiered not on YouTube or Spotify but BBC Radio Merseyside – his 27th studio album has been presented as a nostalgic look back at what you might call his pre-Fab years.
The idea has certainly generated excitement and not a little emotion on the part of fans. McCartney seems to have spent the last few years crossing the Ts and dotting the Is on various aspects of his past: reworking the footage of the Let It Be recording sessions to cast it in a more positive light than the 1970 film of the same name; completing the one song left unfinished during the mid-90s reunion of the surviving Beatles; releasing a documentary designed to remind the public that, for all the critical opprobrium thrown their way, Wings were absolutely huge in the 1970s. A burst of sentimental autobiographical reminiscence adds to the faint but detectable sense that his career is drawing to a close.
Source: theguardian.com/Alexis Petridis
The Beatles’ 1969 magnum opus, Abbey Road, has the same sort of “love it or hate it” legacy as other mega albums like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. Diehard fans will accuse people of choosing the “sell-out” option when they list these albums as their personal favorites, and in some cases, these fans will even argue that the album’s no good.
As silly and subjective as this mindset is, it’s easy to see why albums that have been elevated to such high regard also have an immense amount of pressure to be absolutely perfect. Abbey Road is no exception, with many fans criticizing some tracks for being less-than-ideal offerings from the Fab Four.
That includes these four tracks—although, personally speaking, I can’t get enough of them.
“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”
Not even the rest of The Beatles liked “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”, but that’s where I disagree with John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. This Paul McCartney number is catchy, morbidly funny, and a great example of how effective groove switches can really be. My personal favorite part of the song is when you can hear McCartney snicker through the line “writing 50 times,” as if even he knew how absurd the song was.
“Octopus’s Garden”
Ringo Starr gets a lot of hate for his songwriting contributions to The Beatles, but “Octopus’s Garden” is downright sweet when you think about it. Starr learned about octopi making “gardens” in their homes under the sea while he was on vacation. Then, he writes a song about wanting to be “warm below the storm” with all of his friends. What whimsy! What tender thoughts! Cranky Beatles fans can pry this one out of my cold, dead hands.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Melanie Davis
