Beatles News
George Harrison was rarely a provocateur, however, he called his final album Brainwashed. Accusing anyone of being brainwashed is pretty bold! One of George’s British Invasion peers explained the origin of that memorable title. Notably, it had a connection to George’s spiritual views.
Two kindred spirits in the 1960s counterculture were George Harrison and Donovan. Both artists were folk-rockers who explored spirituality through their songs. George’s songs were often expressions of his Hindu faith, whereas Donovan sang about common New Age topics like Atlantis and witchcraft. Both of them were also environmentalists.
During a 2018 interview with Goldmine, the “Mellow Yellow” singer discussed his feelings about the planet and George’s — and what they both learned from the books they read. “That the older generation was destroying the eco-system with no consideration whatsoever for the inner world of plants, for the inner world of children, and they were trying to brainwash the younger generation to follow in their insidious desire for all things materialistic, including an exploitation of natural resources and a greedy lust for as much money as possible,” he said. “These books George and I shared spoke to that.
“They spoke of the reason why the human race had arrived at this stage,” he said. “It wasn’t just greed and being evil, there was a psychosis going on. It was a brainwashing. George put all this into his music, even calling his very last album Brainwashed.”
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Stewart Copeland said the Beatles’ movie Get Back led the Police to re-evaluate their past – and that’s why their 1983 album Synchronicity will return in a 6-disc box set on July 26.
The drummer, along with former colleagues Sting and Andy Summers, have often discussed the interpersonal issues that made some aspects of the band difficult to endure, even though they loved the music that came out of it.
In a new interview with the Guardian, Copeland was asked why Synchronicity was returning at this particular time. “The Police had an epiphany courtesy of the Beatles’ documentary, Get Back,” he replied.
“Each of us learned, in our separate ivory towers, that the final master isn’t in any way diminished by showing the sketches or demos along the way. [Previous album] Ghost in the Machine had taken us into stadiums and then Synchronicity made us even bigger, but the recording sessions were very dark. We beat the crap out of each other. We’ve laughed about it since, but going back into that black hole isn’t something we tended towards.”
He added that it had been “such fun listening to the demos and songs that didn’t make it” and so “there will be more reissues. We’re starting at the end and working backwards, like Wagner’s Ring Cycle.”
Stewart Copeland Dismisses Police ‘Myth’
Asked once again about the trio’s relationship, Copeland said: “We had a great bond, which wasn’t strong enough to make recording together very easy. We tore each other’s throats out in the studio – but those two motherfuckers came up with incredible stuff and we got on really well on stage, in the van, on the plane.
Source: Martin Kielty/wpdh.com
"Shake It Up, Baby: The Rise of Beatlemania and the Mayhem of 1963" by Ken McNab
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It was like squashing a cockroach, they said. Put your toe down in one spot, rotate your hips and your ankle, shimmy them shoulders, and snap your fingers to the beat. That’s how you kill a bug, and it’s how you do The Twist — but beware. In the new book "Shake It Up, Baby" by Ken McNab, there are some Beatles you really want around.
The first day of 1963 was remarkable for one thing: Great Britain was in the midst of "an extraordinary polar plunge that would last three long, depressing months." Also on that day, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr arrived on a plane home from Hamburg, "just four nameless faces in the crowd."
They had no idea that this would be the year "when everything changed."
They were still getting used to one another, jostling for control. Their manager, Brian Epstein, was toiling to make the four men famous, constantly calling record companies, landing gigs, booking recording studios — one at which the Beatles would record an entire album in a single day. They toured constantly, dozens and dozens of concerts with one reward: their song, "Please Please Me" started to rise on British music charts.
Source: gmtoday.com
When you’re as prolific of a band as the Beatles, there will inevitably be a few songs you dislike—like the “throwaway” track from ‘Rubber Soul’ that John Lennon said he “always hated.” Ironically, Lennon was the one who wrote the song in the first place, although he would later say the tune stayed in the band’s rotation because George Harrison liked it.
Paul McCartney also held the song in somewhat low regard, calling it a “macho song” in Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now. All things considered, perhaps that’s why this track found itself on the last slot of the band’s 1965 record that featured other hits like “Drive My Car” and “In My Life.” John Lennon Always Hated This Closing Beatles Track.
The 14th and final song on the Beatles’ ‘Rubber Soul’ album was an original by John Lennon: “Run for Your Life.” Lennon lifted the main gist of his song from a 1955 Elvis Presley cut called “Baby, Let’s Play House.” Presley sings in the song, Now, listen to me baby. Try to understand: I’d rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man.
In a 1970 Rolling Stone interview, Lennon explained that he often took musical or lyrical phrases he was particularly fond of and incorporated them into his own music. This mimicry trick was something he did with older rock n’ roll tunes from the likes of Chuck Berry and, in this song’s case, Elvis Presley. “I used to like specific lines from songs,” Lennon explained, “so I wrote it around that [Elvis line]. But I didn’t think it was that important.” Even more succinctly, Lennon said, “It was a song I just knocked off.”
Source: Melanie Davis/americansongwriter.com
The Beatles returned to Liverpool last night to attend the northern premiere of their film A Hard Day’s Night and, presumably, to put an end to the rumours that their popularity on Merseyside was on the wane.
In case any readers have just come from Mars, the Beatles are the four long-haired musicians who sing rock’n’roll music and have become as permanent a part of the Liverpool scene as the sight of ferry boats on the Mersey. But, unlike the Mersey ferries the Beatles have been playing in foreign waters: America, Australia, France, and what is even more obnoxiously foreign to Liverpudlians, London.
Thus the care and caution of Mr Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager, in organising this triumphant return. If Mr Epstein did spend any sleepless nights worrying about the Beatles’ honour in their own country he was wasting his time. Long before their aircraft from London arrived at Speke airport all the signs of a successful re-entrance to Liverpool were there. The rooftop at the airport was crowded with screaming teenagers, a prerequisite to Beatles’ entrances and exits, and there were so many policemen on duty that it looked as if they were there to protect each other.
Hysteria
The mere sight of the aircraft coming in, sent hysterical shrieking up from the rooftop. The teenagers cheered even the luggage that was being taken from the aeroplane’s hold. There were no “Welcome Home” banners, a point which John Lennon, the author of Beatle, did not miss. He pointed to an airport sign reading “Naked lights and smoking Prohibited” and wondered what kind of a welcome that was.
Source: theguardian.com
Ringo Starr has gone country after all these years.
At Ringo's Annual Peace & Love Birthday Celebration at Beverly Hills Garden Park, the Beatles legend revealed what inspired the genre shift. Starr credits T Bone Burnett, the Grammy-winning country icon, telling Fox News Digital, "I met him [when] Olivia Harrison was reading poems for George. There was about 100 of us there listening, and he was one of them, and I bumped into him [off and on] since the '70s.
"He said, ‘What are you doing? I said, ‘Oh, well I’m doing this, EPs [extended play albums, which have more tracks than a single, but less than a record]. I’m getting people to write a song, put some music on it."
Ringo Starr decided to produce a country album after a chance meeting with a fellow music icon.
Starr had some pop songs written but said Burnett's song was "absolutely one of the most beautiful country songs I ever heard. So, I thought, ‘I’m going to do a country EP.’"
But when he spoke to Burnett about doing more tracks, he revealed he actually had nine songs, so Ringo said, "I thought let’s make a real CD, so I’m back making a CD." In an interview earlier this year with Variety, Burnett had similar praise for Starr.
"He’s such a beautiful singer. Ringo was in a band with two of the best singers in rock ‘n’ roll history, so people never took him as seriously as a singer as they should," Burnett told the outlet.
Source: Elizabeth Stanton, Larry Fink/foxnews.com
No matter what the Beatles created, the world never seemed ready for what that was. You only knew that it would be different than anything before. Had you loved the band’s last album, you were also aware that the one about to hit record store shelves would be a departure, a moving-on from what already existed. The Beatles both challenged and rewarded listeners this way, which is among the best things about them.
That surprise factor existed from the start with a single like “Please Please Me,” and, of course, “She Loves You,” a song that feels as if you’re hearing it for the first time after you’ve heard it a thousand times. The albums startled as well: Please Please Me had the gumption to function as a cohesive statement and not merely a couple of hits fleshed out with filler, while sophomore outing With the Beatles was a rhythm and blues masterwork from the industrial cities of America via the ports—and the musical melting pot—of the Beatles’ Liverpool.
If you were around back then, you may have believed that the Beatles were about to settle in, and what they did going forward, for however long they managed to last, would be variations on that marvelous output to date. But this was not the Beatles way, and it was certainly not the way of A Hard Day’s Night, the album they released on July 10, 1964, and the best they ever made.
Source: Colin Fleming/thedailybeast.com
A week into their marriage in Gibraltar, Spain, John Lennon and Yoko Ono invited the press into their honeymoon suite at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam in March 1969. To drive home their opposition to the Vietnam War, Lennon and Ono vowed to stay in bed for an entire week. Their bed-in-for-peace drew attention and was replicated by the couple several months later in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
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On May 26, 1969, Lennon and Ono followed up first bed-in-for-peace with another in room 1742—and adjoining rooms 1738, 1740, and 1744—at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. The gathering was also used as a live recording of Lennon’s debut solo single and protest song, “Give Peace a Chance.”
“Our talk is peace talk and our message is peace and we’re promoting a product called peace,” Lennon told the Montreal Gazette. “And we’ve been on a campaign for a few months and our product seems to be getting underway and we’re talking to anybody who’s interested in peace, which is most people.”
Source: Tina Benitez-Eves/americansongwriter.com
When he was Paul McCartney young, he was, of course, a part of The Beatles and at just 24 years of age sang "When I'm 64," which seems even more ironic when you consider the fact that he's now 82 (which is still impossible to believe).
Almost as unlikely to consider is the fact that he actually had a life before he met John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Well, in taking a look at Paul McCartney young, that's exactly what we're exploring, his earliest days as a child in Liverpool, becoming a teenager, meeting John Lennon and embracing history.
We hope you'll join us on this little magical mystery tour. A splendid time is guaranteed for all! What was Paul McCartney's childhood like?
James Paul McCartney was born on Jun 18, 1942 in Liverpool, England at Walton Hospital. His mother, Mary Patricia, was a nurse there, while his father Jim, was a salesman for A. Hannay and Co. cotton merchants until World War II, at which point he began working at Napier's Defense Engineering Works. Paul's older brother (by two years), Peter Michael McCartney, would be born on January 7, 1944.
Back in the 1920s, Paul's father was a pianist and a trumpet player, serving as the leader of Jim Mac's Jazz Band, so Paul came by his musical talent honestly.
Mike and Paul when they were very young. The future Sir Paul looks like he's on the verge of tears, wah-wah-wah! (later translated to "Yeah, yeah, yeah!")
Source: Ed Gross/yahoo.com
Producers of the Beatles' Love stage show thanked fans for 18 years of success after the curtain came down for the final time in Las Vegas Sunday night.
Originally conceived by George Harrison in 2000, the concept was developed in association with contemporary circus troupe Cirque du Soleil. It premiered at the Mirage in Las Vegas in 2006, with input from Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono.
The show was described as “a multi-sensory journey” and a“theatre-in-the-round technological and psychedelic spectacle.” Its Mirage residency was interrupted by the pandemic but reopened in August 2021.
Beatles’ ‘Love’ Show Was Seen by Nearly 12 Million People
“The Beatles’ Love has taken its last bow,” Cirque du Soleil said in a statement. “After bringing together more than 11.8 million fans from around the world, this… masterpiece will forever be celebrated as one of the most exhilarating and colorful performances in Cirque’s history.”
Giles Martin, who eventually used 120 pieces of Beatles music for the soundtrack, reflected in 2017: “Love was a project where I constantly thought I was going to get fired… This was such a ridiculously stupid idea that anyone would let George Martin's son come into Abbey Road, touch the untouched tapes of the Beatles and chop them up to create a show in Vegas… pretty deplorable.”
Source: Martin Kielty/ultimateclassicrock.com
