Beatles News
With a hit new album under his belt, a concert special filmed at the Ryman Auditorium now streaming and a slew of upcoming tour dates, Ringo Starr is as busy as ever. So it’s fair enough that when he brings up talk of slowing down, his three kids consider him something like the drummer who cried wolf.
“Sometimes when I finish a tour, I’m like, ‘That’s the end for me.’ And all my children say, ‘Oh, Dad, you’ve told us that for the last 10 years.’ And they get fed up with me,” Starr tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “I do feel, ‘Oh, that’s got to be enough,’ and then I get a phone call: ‘We’ve got a few gigs if you’re interested.’ Okay, we’re off again!”
The drummer, 84, will set off again with his All Starr Band in June for a 10-date tour, and in September, they’ll play six shows as part of a Las Vegas residency at The Venetian Theatre. Starr — who is dad to sons Zak, 59, and Jason, 57, and daughter Lee, 54, with late ex-wife Maureen and stepdad to wife Barbara Bach's kids Francesca, 56, and Gianni Gregorini, 52 — has played with his namesake band since 1989, and the current lineup includes Steve Lukather, Colin Hay, Warren Ham, Hamish Stuart, Gregg Bissonette and Buck Johnson.
Zak Starkey and Ringo Starr in London in September 2016. David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty
“In those days, I had a phone book, so I found guys who were musicians and I’d call them,” he says of the band’s early days.
Source people.com/Rachel DeSantis
We know that The Beatles influenced rock and roll like no band or artist before or since. In fact, it’s hard to imagine how music might have progressed without the example they set. But it’s also important to note the Fab Four weren’t above borrowing what they liked from others.
John Lennon’s 6 Favorite Beatles Songs
“If I Needed Someone,” found on The Beatles’ landmark 1965 album Rubber Soul, features lyrics that owe a great deal to the unique sensibilities of the song’s writer, George Harrison. But musically, it’s indebted to another ‘60s band of note: The Byrds.
“Someone” Special
By 1965, George Harrison had developed a great deal as a songwriter, and his contributions to The Beatles’ albums started to become a bit more frequent. In the first four albums of the band’s career, he managed just a single solo composition. But on the group’s first album of 1965 (Help!), Harrison earned two writing credits.
He would also write a pair of tracks on Rubber Soul, released at the end of that same year. That was an album where the group took a huge leap in both their songwriting depth and studio wizardry. “If I Needed Someone” delivers on both counts.
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
Across his time in The Beatles and as a solo artist, John Lennon wrote countless iconic songs. With Paul McCartney, he was part of the most legendary songwriting partnership of all time, which was the driving creative force behind The Beatles.
In the early days, the two wrote songs together at Paul's childhood home on Forthlin Road in Allerton. As they grew older and artistic differences within The Beatles emerged, the two tended to write independently before presenting songs to each other for final tweaks.
Speaking about working with Paul, John told Playboy in a 1980 interview: "(Paul) provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, the bluesy notes. There was a period when I thought I didn't write melodies, that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock 'n' roll.
"But, of course, when I think of some of my own songs - 'In My Life', or some of the early stuff, 'This Boy' - I was writing melody with the best of them."
About John and Paul's special working relationship, Wilfred Mellors wrote in 1972: "Opposite poles generate electricity: between John and Paul the sparks flew. John's fiery iconoclasm was tempered by Paul's lyrical grace, while Paul's wide-eyed charm was toughened by John's resilience."
Source: liverpoolecho.co.uk/Dan Haygarth
One To One – the new film about John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s radical 1971-73 – is full of fear, intimacy and great music. “I was completely floored,” says Sean Lennon.
It’s 1972 and John Lennon is talking to drummer Jim Keltner on the phone, about a tour he’s planning that will end in Miami Beach to coincide with a protest at August’s Republican National Convention. The ex-Beatle’s ongoing challenge to President Nixon and the US political establishment has him buzzing, but Keltner sounds a note of concern. Does Lennon realise he’s playing with fire? Has he considered the risks?
Lifted from a recently discovered box of tapes, the audio is one of the stars of One To One: John & Yoko, Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards’ vivid and visceral new film about Lennon and Yoko Ono’s period of controversial activism, 1971-73. The pair’s recorded phone conversations with Keltner, Allen Klein, MC5 manager John Sinclair and more provide some of the film’s most surprising insights. One viewer was particularly struck.
Source: mojo4music.com/Danny Eccleston
The Beatles’ drummer Ringo Starr was inspired to write one of his most famous tracks, Octopus's Garden, after briefly leaving the band.
The 84-year-old rock star left the Fab Four during the recording of The White Album, after he got the sense that his bandmates, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and George Harrison were getting along better without him.
Speaking on The Jimmy Kimmel Show, Starr confirmed he wrote one of his best-known songs during his break.
He said: "It came because on the White Album, I left the band. And I left the band because I didn’t think I was really part of it or playing great and I went and knocked on John [Lennon]’s door and said ‘I feel you three are so close, and I’m out of it,’ and he said ‘I thought it was you three.’
“And then I went to Paul [McCartney]’s and I said ‘I gotta tell you I feel like I’m not part of the band and I’m not playing good and you three are really close’ and he replied ‘I thought it was you three’.
Source: themirror.com/Hannah Furnell
This February 23, George Harrison would’ve turned 82. But, as is often the case, the universe had a different plan in mind, and – instead – the former Beatle left us at age 58 way back in 2001.
But despite his early exit, Harrison left behind a staggering amount of “stuff to listen to,” much of which is – inarguably at this point – historically important, if not the fodder of legend. In this feature, we’ve attempted to pinpoint – album by album – his greatest songs, solos, guest appearances and production credits.
We’ve started the timeline at 1963, excluding anything “unofficial” (sorry, Star Club, BBC and Decca!) but including his most impactful cameos. No, it’s not complete (not gonna happen!), but all the biggies (and a few smallies) are here. Dig in!
Enter, Beatlemania....
The Beatles – Please Please Me (1963)
Source: guitarworld.com/Damian Fanelli, Neville Marten, Bill DeMain, Ian Fortnam
People like to debate about the identity of the fifth Beatle, but there’s really only one answer that makes sense. George Martin was the guy in the room with the four members of the group for the vast majority of their recordings, and his input into their music was often essential to its overall effect.
We could have made this list much longer if we chose. But here are five instances where George Martin’s expertise and taste as a producer made a massive difference in The Beatles‘ catalog.
“Please Please Me” from Please Please Me (1963)
When The Beatles signed with the Parlophone branch of EMI, Martin, who served as the in-house producer for the label, wasn’t quite sure what he’d been handed. They came in with what he felt was an inferior drummer (which led to the hiring of Ringo Starr to replace Pete Best), and he didn’t think their original songs were all that great. In fact, he forced them to raise their game by refusing to allow them to record “Please Please Me” in its original, Roy Orbison-influenced arrangement. The Beatles listened to his advice, sped up the tempo, and came away with their first No. 1 single in the UK.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Jim Beviglia
Have we underestimated Yoko Ono all along? (And did she keep the Beatles together?) Nonfiction: David Sheff’s “Yoko” dives into the musician/artist/activist’s work and life.
In September 1966, John Lennon, who had just finished what would be the Beatles’ last world tour, visited an exhibition, “Unfinished Paintings and Objects.” Featuring the work of Japanese-born American artist Yoko Ono, it was scheduled to open in London the next day.
Spying a stand with a note saying “Apple,” Lennon took a bite. When he realized he had wrecked Ono’s sculpture and hoping to atone, Lennon asked if he could participate in “Painting to Hammer a Nail (No.9).”
“It’s so symbolic, you see — the virginal board,” Yoko explained, before agreeing to let him bang it for five shillings. “Well, I’ll give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer an imaginary nail in,” Lennon replied. “And that’s when we really met,” he subsequently said. “That’s when we locked eyes and she got it and I got it.”
In “Yoko,” David Sheff — author, among other books, of “Beautiful Boy,” which borrows its title from a Lennon song and is about Sheff’s son’s struggle with addiction — examines the life and work of a multifaceted woman. Her name is recognized around the world, but little is known about her life, outside of her connection to Lennon.
Sheff interviewed the couple for an article in Playboy in 1980, shortly before Lennon was murdered, and remained friends with Ono. Taking full advantage of his access to her, his biography manages to be celebratory without losing sight of her idiosyncrasies, flaws and failures.
Sheff quotes extensively from scathing reviews of Ono’s singing and her avant-garde art installations. He explains how her reliance on tarot cards, psychics and astrologers, along with bouts of loneliness, depression and fear, made her ripe for exploitation.
Source: startribune.com/Glenn C. Altschuler
Although Beatle Mania may be a thing of the past for Paul McCartney, he clearly still enjoys a spot of beach mania.
Sir Paul, 82, enjoyed a day in the surf with his wife, Nancy Shevell, 65, in the Caribbean.
Wearing a cream hat, sunglasses and a fruit-patterned swimsuit, Ms Shevell could hardly contain her smiles as she was carried by her husband in the sea off St Barts.
Macca, protecting himself from the sun in a dark, long-sleeved top, was in good spirits, too, as he took a break from a busy start of the year.
Although he's in his eighties, the former Beatle is still performing, selling out two shows in minutes in New York last month.
The audience at one of the gigs at the Bowery Ballroom in Manhattan, which only has a capacity of 575, included stars such as Tom Hanks, 68, Anne Hathaway, 42, Cara Delevingne, 32, and Woody Harrelson, 63.
Sir Paul McCartney, 82, enjoyed a day in the surf with his wife, Nancy Shevell, 65, in the Caribbean
Wearing a cream hat, sunglasses and a fruit-patterned swimsuit, Ms Shevell could hardly contain her smiles as she was carried by her husband in the sea off St Barts. The concert was a follow-up to a surprise 90-minute show the day before, which he only announced on the day.
Source: dailymail.co.uk
One of the favourite songs of The Beatles‘ Paul McCartney was written by fellow Fab Four member George Harrison.
McCartney, 82, confirmed Here Comes the Sun from Abbey Road was one of his all-time favourite recordings from Harrison. The Wings frontman also confirmed Brainwashed, Harrison’s posthumous release, which dropped in 2002, was among his favourite albums. In a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) to promote his 2020 album, McCartney II, McCartney confirmed Here Comes the Sun was one of his favourite songs from Harrison. He wrote: “It is a brilliant song and the kind of song that’s really good in times like these.”
The “times like these” McCartney refers to in his comment is the lockdown the United Kingdom, and other countries across the world, experienced due to the Coronavirus pandemic. A previous compilation release from McCartney saw the legendary songwriter name a Brainwashed track as another favourite from Harrison’s discography.
The album Paul McCartney’s Glastonbury Groove compiled some of McCartney’s favourite songs. Compiled by McCartney himself, the album featured classics like God Only Knows by The Beach Boys, Cheek to Cheek by Fred Astaire, and George Harrison’s Marwa Blues.
Source: cultfollowing.co.uk/Ewan Gleadow
