Beatles News
John Lennon, born on October 9, 1940, in Liverpool, England, was a legendary singer, songwriter, and peace activist who co-founded the iconic rock band, The Beatles. He was a pivotal figure in the music industry and became one of the most influential and celebrated musicians of the 20th century.
In the early 1960s, along with Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, John Lennon formed The Beatles, a band that would revolutionize popular music and become a cultural phenomenon. As the primary songwriter and co-lead vocalist of the group, Lennon’s creative contributions were instrumental in shaping their sound and style.
The Beatles’ massive success and unprecedented fame brought Beatlemania to the world, influencing an entire generation and changing the landscape of popular music forever. Some of Lennon’s most iconic compositions for The Beatles include “Imagine,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “A Day in the Life,” and “Let It Be.”
In 1969, John Lennon married artist and musician Yoko Ono, and the couple became known for their activism and advocacy for peace. Their “Bed-In” events, peace protests, and iconic song “Give Peace a Chance” demonstrated Lennon’s commitment to promoting non-violence and social harmony.
Source: Edward Tomlin/singersroom.com
Humans are strange and complicated creatures, so it makes sense that when you put four ultra-creative, super-talented, ridiculously imaginative musicians in a room together, there's bound to be some conflict. In the case of The Beatles, there ended up being a lot of conflict — and that means that even though it's Yoko Ono who frequently gets blamed for their honestly inevitable breakup, that's not actually the case. Not entirely, at least.
What happened was more along the lines of a perfect storm of trials and tribulations that the band just couldn't weather — starting with the death of their longtime manager and massive disagreements over who was going to replace him. Add in more disagreements over their direction, individual members who wanted to nurture their individual talents, arguments over who was going to get their songs on albums, stress from rampant drug use, and yes, the added pressures of Yoko Ono's appearances on the scene and in the studio, and something just had to give.
Source: DB Kelly/grunge.com
Paul McCartney had a clear vision for 'Hey Jude.' When he pushed back on George Harrison's contributions, Harrison grew irritated.
George Harrison and Paul McCartney were the first members of The Beatles to meet. They grew close in their adolescence and would go on to become founding members of one of the biggest bands in the world. Their time in the band was not beneficial to their relationship, though. Harrison and McCartney bickered often about music. McCartney recalled the struggle they faced while working on “Hey Jude” when Harrison made it clear he didn’t like the direction McCartney was taking the song.
By the late 1960s, Harrison felt McCartney was overly domineering. When McCartney gave Harrison instructions, their interactions often devolved into arguments.
“If I made a suggestion and it was something that, say, George didn’t want to do, it could develop quite quickly into a mini-argument,” McCartney said in The Beatles Anthology. “In fact, George walked out of the group. I’m not sure of the exact reason, but I think that they thought I was being too domineering.”
This happened while they were recording “Hey Jude.” McCartney did not like Harrison’s additions to the song and instructed him to stop.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison let another rock star use the guitar Eric Clapton played on The Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." The star used it on a tune from Apple Records.
George Harrison let another rock star use the guitar that Eric Clapton played on The Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” What an honor! That rock star used the guitar on another classic song. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is a beloved tune but it was never a hit in the United States.
Peter Frampton is a rock star who was part of the bands The Herd and Humble Pie. He also had a number of solo hits, including “Do You Feel Like We Do,” “Baby, I Love Your Way,” “Show Me the Way,” and “I’m in You.” In a 2022 Loudersound interview, Frampton recalled what it was like getting to work with George and company. “It was: ‘Nice to meet you, man … Do you want to play?’ I said: ‘You mean now?’
“They’d just finished writing this song for Doris Troy, called ‘Ain’t That Cute,'” he recalled. “So he gave me ‘Lucy,’ that red Les Paul that he used on a lot of later records, and the one Eric played on ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps.'” “Ain’t That Cute” appeared on Troy’s self-titled album, which was released through The Beatles’ Apple Records.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
As 1968 came to a close, the Beatles were for the first time in a state of creative limbo. In late November of that year, they’d released The Beatles, their sprawling double-disc effort popularly known as the White Album. The record showed an impressive creative breadth, yet it revealed the band’s lack of focus with its assortment of disparate songs, many of which were recorded without the participation of the full band.
While the White Album was an unqualified success at retail, critics were sharply divided in their estimation of it. Nowhere was this more evident than in the New York Times, where it was deemed a “major success” by one reviewer and “boring beyond belief” by another.
The start of a new year is a traditional opportunity to take stock of one’s circumstances and begin anew. Certainly, that’s what the Beatles had in mind when, on January 2, 1969, they convened for the first time since the White Album sessions to begin work on a new project titled 'Get Back.' Dreamed up and orchestrated by Paul McCartney, the effort was designed to get the foursome back on track, working together as a single entity and recording live in the studio, with no (or minimal) overdubs, as when they’d made their first recordings for EMI in 1962.
Source: Alan di Perna/guitarworld.com
‘If any journalist asks you about the Beatles because you’re from Liverpool, say you hate them and you don’t listen to that old crap.’ Such was the advice that the DJ Roger Eagle, promoter and founder of the legendary (and there really is no other word for it) Merseyside punk club Eric’s, dispensed to a young Ian Broudie in the late 1970s. Little could either have imagined that almost simultaneously John Lennon, over in New York in the Dakota Building, was busy demo-ing ‘Now and Then’. It was a song which would resurface as the final Beatles single and top the charts some 40-odd years later, aided by a form of AI technology that possibly only members of Dalek I, the Wirral’s wackier answer to Kraftwerk, could have dreamt of back then.
Source: Travis Elborough/spectator.co.uk
Wings recorded “Live and Let Die” during sessions for Red Rose Speedway, but this, one of their defining songs, was made for another project and wasn’t included on the album. Paul McCartney wrote the song for the 1973 James Bond film of the same name. And there was controversy over who would sing it.
He’d struggled early in his post-Beatles career, fighting depression and writer’s block in the aftermath of leaving the biggest band in the world. He had a foil in John Lennon and an identity as a “Beatle,” but the new decade found him at war with critics’ anti-McCartney bias.
McCartney’s early home studio recordings have aged well, but contemporary critics weren’t pleased. After recording Ram with his wife, Linda, in 1971, McCartney formed a new band called Wings. Inspired by Bob Dylan’s breakneck recording pace, they recorded their debut quickly, and U.K. critics viewed Wild Life as rushed and overhyped. Now, the man who wrote “Yesterday” needed a hit.
Source: Thom Donovan/americansongwriter.com
John Lennon began putting on a comical show during a Beatles concert. Ringo Starr thought he had gone 'mad.'
In 1965, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr played a show at New York’s Shea Stadium. The concert was The Beatles’ largest to date and, understandably, jangled their nerves. While they said they always felt better once they got onstage, Starr noticed some surprising behavior in Lennon. He believed Lennon went “mad” during the show.
The Beatles’ concert at Shea Stadium had over 55,000 attendees, making it their largest concert up to that point. They found it overwhelming and, according to Starr, the pressure got to at least one of them.
“If you look at the film footage you can see how we reacted to the place,” Starr said in The Beatles Anthology. “It was very big and very strange. I feel that on that show John cracked up. He went mad; not mentally ill, but he just got crazy. He was playing the piano with his elbows and it was really strange.”
According to Lennon, he was doing a Jerry Lee Lewis impression and using his feet to play the piano.
“I was putting my foot on it and George couldn’t play for laughing,” he said. “I was doing it for a laugh. The kids didn’t know what I was doing. Because I did the organ on ‘I’m Down,’ I decided to play it on stage for the first time. I didn’t really know what to do, because I felt naked without a guitar, so I was doing all Jerry Lee — I was jumping about and I only played about two bars of it.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Following hard on the heels of Père Duval – who, the previous night, had a sedate audience singing popular religious songs – Les Beatles made their entry to Paris on Thursday at the Olympia music-hall. “There are too many hairdressers invited to Parisian galas these days for such badly combed people to have a triumph,” sniffed the critic of Le Figaro. But he did appreciate what he described as “an exhibition of English boxe staged in the wings by a gros commando of journalists direct from Fleet Street.”
The audience for the premiere were for the most part highly varnished members of tout-Paris nightclub and entertainment life. Ringo Beatle complained gloomily that the house was full of old people and not much heat could be expected to be generated. He spoke just a moment too soon.
They had suddenly appeared in our midst, fringed eyes and teeth gleaming, like a clutch that had strayed from Duck Soup. It was not until they had slid into their dressing room that the photographers decided they wanted to take pictures. In the adjoining dressing room the young French pop singer Sylvie Vartan dutifully conformed to the custom of leaving her dressing room door open so that she could be photographed at will, reading telegrams and arranging flowers. But the Beatles were shut off from us with a bodyguard on duty. Occasionally we had a tantalising glimpse of them reading comics, surrounded by hefty protecting uncles.
Source: Peter Lennon/theguardian.com
George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" has quite the pedigree. While "My Sweet Lord" was famous in the United States, its success in the United Kingdom is jaw-dropping.
George worked with a superstar producer and another rock star to record the track. While “My Sweet Lord” was famous in the United States, its success in the United Kingdom is jaw-dropping.
Peter Frampton revealed why he helped George Harrison record ‘My Sweet Lord’
During a 2022 interview with Loudersound, Peter Frampton revealed he became friends with George after meeting the “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)” singer at Trident Studios. “George called a few weeks later and said: ‘Pete, I’m doing my own album with Phil Spector. Would you come and play some acoustic? Phil wants, like, nineteen of everything,'” Frampton recalled. The album in question was George’s magnum opus, All Things Must Pass.
Source:Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
