Beatles News
All you need is love – but not an autograph from Sir Paul McCartney.
The Beatle has gotten quite persnickety when it comes to fans seeking his signature. But at age 79, he has earned the right to be.
In a new interview, McCartney shared that while he’s happy to have a conversation with fans, he will not participate in scribbling his John Hancock or posing for selfies.
“[It] always struck me as a bit strange,” the Grammy-winning singer/songwriter told Reader’s Digest UK for a November 2021 cover story. “‘Here, can I write your name down on the back of this till receipt please?’ Why? We both know who I am.”
McCartney has found that stopping those kinds of interactions are better in the long run. “What you’ve usually got is a ropey photo with a poor backdrop and me looking a bit miserable,” he said. “Let’s chat, let’s exchange stories.”
The beloved Beatles musician is following suit from his former bandmate, Ringo Starr, who’s also not a fan of the fanatical practice. In 2008, Starr warned fans to stop sending him fan mail or presenting him with objects to autograph.
“I’m warning you with peace and love. I have too much to do, so no more fan mail!” the beloved drummer said in a video message. “And no objects to be signed. Nothing! Anyway, peace and love, peace and love.”
Source: Karu F. Daniels, New York Daily News
Ringo Starr was lazing around his house when he wrote his first solo Beatles song. Here's what he said about the writing process.
Ringo Starr rarely wrote or sang Beatles songs. He preferred to play the drums and support his bandmates. Even after The Beatles broke up, his bandmates often wrote him songs for his solo albums. Still, he had several writing credits with the band. John Lennon insinuated that Starr got his first solo writing credit with the band because he was bored.
In 1968, Starr received his first solo writing credit with The Beatles with “Don’t Pass Me By.” The song appeared on the White Album. Starr said he wrote it while lazing around his house.
“I wrote ‘Don’t Pass Me By’ when I was sitting round at home,” Starr said in The Beatles Anthology. “I only play three chords on the guitar and three on the piano. I was fiddling with the piano — I just bang away — and then if a melody comes and some words, I just have to keep going. That’s how it happened: I was just sitting at home alone and ‘Don’t Pass Me By’ arrived. We played it with a country attitude.”
Lennon was blunt when he described Starr’s writing process.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
It is the most famous love triangle in music history: George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Pattie Boyd, the quintessential face of the 1960s, who was married to Harrison while being courted by Clapton. Over half a century after Clapton uttered to Harrison the immortal words “I have to tell you, man, I’m in love with your wife” after the Beatle confronted the couple in the garden of the Bee Gees’ manager Robert Stigwood in 1970, the former model is selling their love letters. Alongside photographs taken by Boyd, Christie’s is auctioning lyrics by Harrison and the original artwork for Derek and the Dominos’ 1970 album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs — a painting of a golden-haired girl that Clapton bought for its resemblance
Source: Will Hodgkinson/thetimes.co.uk
George Martin got to know The Beatles well over the years. While he usually liked them, they once let him down.
The Beatles’ longtime producer George Martin worked with them on each album they put out in the 1960s. He was a key part of their success and got to know them well throughout their collaboration. Their antics, particularly in the early 1960s, grew familiar to him. Still, they sometimes pushed Martin too far. He shared what they did to let him down for the very first time.
In the early 1960s, The Beatles traveled to Paris for a concert. While they were there, Martin booked them studio time to record German language versions of “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” A record company executive believed there was no chance the songs would sell in Germany if they were in English.
“I was disinclined to believe this, but that’s what he said and I told The Beatles,” Martin said in The Beatles Anthology. “They laughed: ‘That’s absolute rubbish.’ So I said, ‘Well, if we want to sell records in Germany, that’s what we’ve got to do.’ So they agreed to record in German. I mean, really it was rubbish, but the company sent over one Otto Demmlar to help coach them in German.”
Demmlar and Martin waited for The Beatles in the studio on the day they were meant to record, but they never arrived.
“It was the first time in my experience with them that they had let me down, so I rang the George V Hotel where they were staying, and Neil Aspinall answered,” Martin said. “He said, ‘I’m sorry, they’re not coming, they asked me to tell you.’ I said, ‘You mean to tell me they’re telling you to tell me? They’re not telling me themselves?’ — ‘That’s right.’ — ‘I’m coming right over,’ I said.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
A limited-edition vinyl EP featuring John Lennon’s 1973 hit “Mind Games” and three other tracks will be released as part of the 2024 Record Store Day celebration on Saturday, April 20.
The EP will offer fans a preview of the upcoming 50th anniversary “Ultimate Edition” reissue of the Mind Games album.
Mind Games and its title track were issued in the U.S. on October 29, 1973. “Mind Games” was the only single released from the record. It peaked at No. 18 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The Writing of “Mind Games”
Lennon began writing “Mind Games” in 1969, initially titling the song “Make Love, Not War.” Another song that Lennon was working on around that time called “I Promise” also featured some lyrics and melody that would be heard in “Mind Games.”
Lennon completed “Mind Games” after reading the 1972 book Mind Games: The Guide to Inner Space, written by Robert Masters and Jean Houston. The book offered exercises to help people train their minds to focus on positivity by looking inward.
Source: Matt Friedlander/americansongwriter.com
Paul McCartney has revealed the moving inspiration behind his song, “My Valentine”.
The Beatles star has been divulging some of the stories and influences behind his best-known songs while in the Fab Four, as well as his work as a solo artist and with his post-Beatles band, Wings.
He wrote “My Valentine” for his wife Nancy Shevell, whom he met in 2007. The song was included on his 2012 album, Kisses on the Bottom, which comprised several cover versions of tracks by songwriters Billy Hill, Frank Loesser and Irving Berlin.
In the latest episode of his podcast, McCartney: A Life in Lyrics, the 81-year-old explained that he went on a holiday with Shevell before they were “an item”, but he already knew he was in love with her.
“I had fallen in love with my lady Nancy, but we weren’t an item yet, and in my case I was looking over my shoulder for paparazzi,” he explained.
Source: Roisin O'Connor/independent.co.uk
George Harrison was excited about a song he brought to John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They barely paid attention to it, though.
In The Beatles, one of George Harrison’s biggest problems was the way John Lennon and Paul McCartney treated his songwriting. They had been the primary songwriters for the first half of the 1960s. When Harrison started contributing more songs, they seemed to view it as more of an intrusion than an opportunity for growth. According to Harrison, they hardly paid any attention to what would become one of his best-known songs. George Harrison said John Lennon and Paul McCartney didn’t take 1 song seriously
While Harrison was at his parents’ home, he began using books to write a song.
“I decided to write a song based on the first thing I saw upon opening any book — as it would be relative to that moment, at that time,” Harrison said in The Beatles Anthology. “I picked up a book at random, opened it, saw ‘gently weeps’, then laid the book down again and started the song.”
The resulting song was “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” It would go on to become one of his best-known songs, but Lennon and McCartney hardly paid it any mind at the time.
“We tried to record it, but Paul and John were so used to just cranking out their tunes that it was very difficult at times to get serious and record one of mine,” Harrison said. “It wasn’t happening. They weren’t taking it seriously and I don’t think they were even all playing on it, and so I went home that night thinking, ‘Well, that’s a shame,’ because I knew the song was pretty good.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Fans of The Beatles are in for a treat thanks to Paul McCartney, who says never-before-seen lyrics written by the iconic group are on the way.
On Monday, the former Beatles star, 79, announced the dozens of songs that will be featured in his upcoming "self-portrait" book, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present.
The book — which was first announced in February — will "recount his life and art through the prism of 154 songs from all stages of his career," highlighting 154 songs by The Beatles, Wings, and his lengthy solo career. Notable songs included are "Blackbird," "Live and Let Die," "Hey Jude," "Band On The Run," and "Yesterday."
According to McCartney's official site, the book will reveal previously unreleased lyrics from an unrecorded song by The Beatles, "Tell Me Who He Is." Fans will also get a glimpse at decades-old handwritten lyrics and photographs from McCartney's personal archive.
Source: Vanessa Etienne/ca.movies.yahoo.com
Legendary music producer Sir George Martin, often referred to as the “fifth Beatle,” passed away at age 90.
With a career that spanned more than six decades, Martin produced all but one of The Beatles’ albums, including 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which became the first rock album to win the Grammy for Album of the Year.
Martin won six Grammys throughout his career and had 23 #1 singles in the U.S. In addition to The Beatles, he produced works by such artists as Elton John, Jeff Beck, Kenny Rogers, Cheap Trick and others.
Among his many honors, Martin was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1999 and received a knighthood in 1996.
Martin’s son, Giles Martin, has continued to work with The Beatles, and recently produced their final song, “Now and Then,” which uses vocals Lennon recorded on a demo in the late ’70s, along with guitar the late George Harrison recorded in the mid-’90s, and new recordings from Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
The tune debuted at #1 in the U.K. and #7 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Source: kshe95.com
Paul McCartney is one of the most successful songwriters in history. He’s penned almost too many major smash singles to count, and those who have listened to them may begin to notice some similarities between them. In a new interview, the former Beatle admitted that some of his tunes may follow a blueprint he likes to use—or at least one he leaned on early in his career.
“There was a certain formula,” McCartney admitted, up front, when talking about the composition of some of his earliest hits. The rocker clarified what he meant by adding, “the pronoun I, you, me, him, her, my, she…”
McCartney has been known to use—or some might say overuse—pronouns in a certain way in his work. But while some may call that formulaic, he explained that there was a reason behind this decision...and it wasn’t because it was what he and his collaborators were used to, or even that they were simply lazy.
“Because we wanted to contact the fans, there were songs to contact the people with,” McCartney shared when talking about whether or not he felt that his songs were formulaic at the time they were written. He’s referring to many of his Beatles-era cuts, especially some of the earliest examples of their globe-dominating smashes.
Source: Hugh McIntyre/forbes.com
