Beatles News
Many artists rose to the occasion with tributes to John Lennon in the immediate aftermath of his death. You could make the argument that it took those that were closest to him and shared in the experience of The Beatles to do it best. Paul McCartney’s “Here Today” tried to imagine how Lennon would react to such a tribute. And George Harrison’s “All Those Years Ago” reflected Lennon’s unique standing in the culture as a polarizing figure, while also reconciling Harrison’s own feelings about his departed friend.
What went into Harrison creating the song? How did it evolve based on Lennon’s death? And what made it a kind of Beatles reunion record? Let’s go back to how it got started with, oddly enough, a rejection.
Many of Ringo Starr’s greatest solo successes came courtesy of, you guessed it, a little help from his friends. Specifically, Harrison had a hand in writing two of Starr’s biggest singles: “It Don’t Come Easy” and “Photograph.” Harrison intended the same thing with a song he wrote entitled “All Those Years Ago.” He thought it fit his old bandmate, and Starr recorded the song with the help of Harrison and others in 1980.
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
When The Beatles broke up, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, were on decidedly bad terms. They were embroiled in a legal battle and spoke publicly about their gripes with one another. One of Lennon’s biggest problems with his bandmates was how unwelcoming they were to Yoko Ono. While it angered him, he still said he could understand their frustration.
John Lennon understood why his Beatles bandmates were unhappy with him
Lennon and Ono were incredibly close, both emotionally and physically. She joined him in the studio, to the irritation of the other Beatles.
“He just wanted to go off in the corner and look into Yoko’s eyes for hours, saying to each other, ‘It’s going to be all right,’” McCartney said in The Beatles Anthology. “It was pretty freaky when we were trying to make a track.”
Source: imdb.com
Do you prefer the Beatles to Wings? Yeah, duh — even Paul McCartney knows that his first big band far outstripped his second, as he has now admitted.
In an episode of the podcast McCartney: A Life in Lyrics on iHeartPodcasts, McCartney discussed "Band on the Run," the title track of Wings' third album. He acknowledged that, even before Wings began, he knew they would never be able to equal the magic of the Beatles.
"A lot of this is just happening in my own mind. It's not what anyone's telling me," he reflected. "I'm automatically thinking, 'Well, the Beatles were great, so Wings is not going to be as great.' My problem all along was: after the Beatles, who's gonna be as good as them? I kind of knew it couldn't happen."
Taking a slightly more optimistic outlook, McCartney continued, "I thought, 'Yeah, but we can be not as the Beatles, but we can be something else."
He acknowledged that it was difficult to know he could never match the heights of the Beatles, but said that he still had "reserves of courage" from the days when the Beatles toughed it out as an unknown band.
Even if Wings never reached the fame or acclaim of the Beatles, they did find success of their own. McCartney noted, "I was talking to a journalist once about Sgt. Pepper, going on about it as if he must admire it, and he said, 'Well, to tell you the truth, it was Band on the Run for me. It's more my generation.' Band on the Run was his Sgt. Pepper."
McCartney added, "That has proved to be a very interesting fact over the years — that there are some people who actually like what I did with Wings better than the Beatles. There are some people whose first thing they ever heard was 'Band on the Run' or 'Jet' or something that we did with Wings."
Hear the episode of A Life in Lyrics below.
Source: exclaim.ca
After The Beatles broke up, each member faced the colossal task of making music under the shadow of the biggest band in history. Paul McCartney took a lot of heat and his early solo albums were not well received by critics. Looking back, the McCartney I and McCartney II home recordings are pretty special.
John Lennon wanted peace and George Harrison wanted a different kind of peace. The quiet kind. Ringo Starr is beloved but he won’t break this Top 10 list.
After The Beatles, the dismantled parts of the greater sum had to learn to create on their own.
“Handle with Care” could have been a solo George Harrison song. Instead, the session featuring Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, and Roy Orbison resulted in a new band, Traveling Wilburys. Otherwise, “Handle with Care” is most definitely on this list. “Got My Mind Set on You” almost made the cut. Alas, it’s a cover.
The Beatles were a supergroup formed in reverse. Here are the top 10 solo songs by a Beatle.
10. “Jenny Wren” by Paul McCartney (2005)
Source: Thom Donovan/americansongwriter.com
It’s been 60 years since photographer Harry Benson reluctantly agreed to cover the Beatles, first in Paris and then on their historic visit to the United States.
Now 94-year-old Benson reflects on the close relationships he developed with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.
They allowed Benson to capture some iconic moments from their pillow fight the night “I Want to Hold Your Hand” hit the top of the American charts, to their historic appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Benson decided to stay in the United States where his subjects included former presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, in addition to American icons like Muhammed Ali, Jackie Kennedy and Michael Jackson. As a photojournalist, he chronicled Robert Kennedy’s last moments and walked alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Meredith march.
He joins host Robin Young to talk about his years with the Beatles and how photography shaped his life. An exhibition celebrating the 60th anniversary of his arrival in the U.S. with the Beatles runs through February at New York’s Museum of Art and Design.
Source: wbur.org
So much is known about The Beatles, as interest in the band has remained incredibly high for decades, ever since they took over the world in the mid-’60s. Countless fans, journalists, documentarians, and historians have attempted to answer every question related to the musicians, but one big query remains: how did they get their name? It seems like a simple ask, but it’s one that no one can answer definitively – not even one of the members of the group.
In the latest episode of his iHeartRadio and Pushkin podcast Paul McCartney: A Life in Lyrics, the Beatles singer, songwriter, and musician opened up about the band’s name and how it came to be–though he couldn’t share any definitive answers. “The actual origin of it is clouded in mystery,” McCartney confirmed, essentially admitting that even he doesn’t remember.
While he can’t confirm or deny any of the possibilities that have been presented throughout the years, McCartney did share what he remembers of that time. “My memory of it was that we went striving to find something with a dual meaning,” the famous musician commented during a discussion of the forming of the group. He also said that he and his fellow bandmates may have been thinking of double entendres and names with more than one meaning “because of The Crickets.”
In the absence of a definitive backstory of the name The Beatles, many fans and music lovers have come up with their own possible ideas of what may have happened, and McCartney mentioned this as well during the podcast episode. “There are all sorts of theories about this,” the rocker mused about the many, many stories he’s probably heard throughout the years.
Source: Hugh McIntyre/forbes.com
John Lennon wrote a book after he joined The Beatles. He admitted that he could have been an author if he didn't pursue music.
In 1964, John Lennon extricated his public image from The Beatles when he published the book In His Own Write. The book, which was full of Lennon’s nonsensical poems and short stories, received acclaim from critics. It proved that even if he hadn’t been a famous musician, he may have been able to find success as a writer.
Lennon became a published author in 1964. It wasn’t necessarily something he sought out to do; he had simply amassed enough writing to fill a book.
“It’s about nothing. If you like it, you like it; if you don’t, you don’t. That’s all there is to it,” Lennon said of In His Own Write in The Beatles Anthology. “There’s nothing deep in it, it’s just meant to be funny. I put things down on sheets of paper and stuff them in my pocket. When I have enough, I have a book.”
He didn’t think he ever could have become a published author without The Beatles. Still, he knew he would have been a writer regardless of his level of fame. He wondered if he could have been a Beat poet.
“There was never any real thought of writing a book. It was something that snowballed,” he said. “If I hadn’t been a Beatle I wouldn’t have thought of having the stuff published; I would have been crawling around broke and just writing it and throwing it away. I might have been a Beat Poet.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
John Lennon said The Beatles had to change in order to become famous. He shared why they felt this was necessary.
After The Beatles broke up, John Lennon had no fear of speaking his mind. He gave lengthy interviews in which he spoke poorly about his bandmates and their music. While Lennon spoke his mind in The Beatles — he notably caused a stir when he said The Beatles were bigger than Jesus — he said he wasn’t as honest as he wanted to be. He shared why they had to compromise in order to achieve success.
In the early years of The Beatles, the band received criticism for their clothing and long hair. According to Lennon, their style was already a compromise. They had to change themselves in order to seem palatable to the public.
“We weren’t as open and as truthful when we didn’t have the power to be,” Lennon said in The Beatles Anthology. “We had to take it easy. We had to shorten our hair to leave Liverpool. We had to wear suits to get on TV. We had to compromise.”
He said they didn’t necessarily realize they weren’t being truthful. They were just doing what it took to get their music career off the ground.
“We had to get hooked to get in, and then get a bit of power and say, ‘This is what we’re like,’” he said. “We had to falsify a bit, even if we didn’t realize it at the time.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney is far and away one of the most successful musicians of all time in his home country of the U.K. In fact, depending on how one measures that title, he may win, as he has been racking up sales and hits since he launched his musical career more than half a century ago.
This week, McCartney is back on the U.K. albums chart, but not with a brand new title. Instead, he returns with one of his most beloved projects–which has now reached the ranking of the top-consumed albums in the country in four separate instances.
McCartney appears at No. 16 on the U.K. albums chart with Band on the Run. The third full-length from the former Beatles’ new band Wings was recently reissued for its fiftieth anniversary. The Official Charts Company counts the new extended edition as a separate entity, and its immediate success adds to the legend’s career totals.
According to the Official Charts Company, Band on the Run has now reached the albums chart in the U.K. four times. The set has spent more than four weeks on the tally–many more frames, actually. The title has now appeared on the ranking in four different forms, which speaks to not only how long the album has been around, but also its seemingly never-ending appeal.
Band on the Run debuted on the U.K. albums chart in 1973, when it was released. At the time, it hit No. 1, giving McCartney another champion. That specific offering has spent 124 weeks somewhere on the ranking.
Source: Hugh McIntyre/forbes.com
After the Beatles broke up in 1970, drummer Ringo Starr faced a crossroads. The Beatles’ Let It Be would close the book on that iconic group. It was a transitional time for the famed musician, who had already acted in the movies Candy and The Magic Christian, the latter with Peter Sellers. With his time in the most famous rock band of all time coming to a close, new adventures awaited him. These included an unexpected cinematic character study that begat an incredible sequel.
On the music front, Starr was the first Beatle to release a proper solo album on March 27, 1970 entitled Sentimental Journey. This was even before Let It Be hit stores. It was his take on the Great American Songbook, which he followed with the country collection Beaucoup of Blues on September 27. These two releases sold decently, with his debut going Top 10 in the UK and Top 30 in America. Two non-album singles co-written with his former bandmate George Harrison, “It Don’t Come Easy” and “Back Off Bugaloo,” went Top 5 in the UK and Top 10 in the U.S.
But it was in 1973 that his third album Ringo became a bonafide hit, going Gold in America and eventually Platinum. The two singles “Photograph” (co-written with Harrison) and the Sherman Brothers cover “You’re Sixteen,” both hit the Top 5 in the UK and shot to No. 1 in America.
Source: Bryan Reesman/americansongwriter.com
