Beatles News
Beatles fans will be offered a glimpse into George Harrison’s childhood through the back door of his former home, which has gone on display in a museum.
The door, previously on the guitarist’s family home in Upton Green, Speke, Liverpool, is the latest item from the Fab Four’s past to go on show at the Liverpool Beatles Museum.
Harrison moved to the home from the age of six, in 1950, and the family stayed there until 1962.
Owner Roag Best, brother of one time Beatles drummer Pete Best, with the back door from the former home in Upton Green in Speke, Liverpool (Chris Neill/Beatles Museum)
Museum owner Roag Best – the brother of early Beatles drummer Pete Best – said: “Upton Green had the Quarry Men and also John, Paul and George rehearsing together at the house. George was still living there at the beginning of Beatlemania.”
The terraced home is now an Airbnb owned by Ken Lambert, who got in touch with the museum.
“When he bought the house the previous owners asked him if he was interested in the original back door,” Mr Best said.
“It was just propped up in an outbuilding, a little bit worse for wear.
“He and a friend spent a considerable amount of time renovating the door and once it was renovated he wasn’t going to put it back on the house because it’s 73 years old, if not older.
Source: breakingnews.ie
In contrast to the White Album and Let It Be, Abbey Road – released in September 1969 – found The Beatles operating relatively cohesively; attempting to pull together, in step with one another if not exactly on the same page. "Abbey Road was really unfinished songs all stuck together," bemoaned John Lennon. "None of the songs had anything to do with each other, no thread at all.”
It was the final collection of songs The Beatles recorded together, and our track-by-track guide tells its story. 'Come Together'
Very much John Lennon’s song, Abbey Road’s opener started out as Let’s Get It Together, a campaign song for Timothy Leary, standing against Ronald Reagan for Governor of California.
Lennon kick-started his lyric with a phrase from Chuck Berry’s You Can’t Catch Me (‘Here come old flat-top’), but neglected to cut the line from the finished recording. Berry’s publishers initiated plagiarism proceedings but settled out of court in 1973 on condition Lennon record three of their songs (hence his 1975 album Rock ’N’ Roll).
Source: Ian Fortnam/loudersound.com
“Watching the Wheels” will go down as one of the loveliest songs in John Lennon’s catalog. His mind clear and the restlessness of previous years largely cooled, he wrote a playful, tender ode to the joys of dropping out of the rat race to be with family. It’s a bitter irony that fate would take that all away from him and lend “Watching the Wheels” an entirely unintended context. Let’s take a look back at the meaning behind “Watching the Wheels” by John Lennon—how this amazing song came to be, starting with where Lennon was in his life at the time that he wrote it.It’s nothing these days for even the hottest musicians to take several years between major album releases. But that kind of thing just wasn’t done that often in the ‘70s. Rock stars were expected to churn out product on the regular. John Lennon was arguably the most famous musician in the world at that time. Yet he maintained radio silence for the entire second half of the decade.
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
“I heard that Denny was getting better, there was hope for the future, but obviously not,” says McCartney of the singer and guitarist who stuck with him in Wings through good times and bad. “It’s very sad because Denny was great. Can you imagine trying to start another band after The Beatles? With Denny, we managed it.”
In the early ‘70s Paul McCartney knew all about having work to do. The end of the band against which all others must be judged left him in a depression, exacerbated not only by feeling he had peaked aged 27 but also the law suit he filed on December 31, 1970, in response to John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr appointing Allen Klein as Beatles manager. The old gang fell apart. McCartney needed a new gang. It turned out to be his family.
“Yes, that was the feeling,” says McCartney. “After the end of The Beatles I was faced with certain alternatives. One was to give up music entirely and do God knows what. Another was to start a super-band with very famous people, Eric Clapton and so on. I didn’t like either so I thought: How did The Beatles start? It was a bunch of mates who didn’t know what they were doing. That’s when I realised maybe there is a third alternative: to get a band that isn’t massively famous, to not worry if we don’t know what we’re doing because we would form our character by learning along the way. It was a real act of faith. It was crazy, actually.”
Source: Will Hodgkinson/mojo4music.com
Paul McCartney said it was a challenge for The Beatles' girlfriends to fit in with them. He shared why this was such a difficult task.
By 1966, every Beatle but Paul McCartney was married. Their manager had tried to keep their relationships secret for fear it would alienate their fans, but this didn’t stop the Beatles from pursuing romance. According to McCartney, it was difficult to date a Beatle. He shared why he thought the bond between bandmates was difficult for their partners to handle.
The relationships between members of The Beatles would eventually fracture and ice over. In the early 1960s, though, they were quite close. The band did everything together even when they weren’t working on music. This meant that the women in their lives often took a secondary role.
“We had a good relationship. Even with touring there were enough occasions to keep a reasonable relationship going,” McCartney said in The Beatles Anthology. “To tell the truth, the women at that time got sidelined.”
A black and white picture of The Beatles sitting on a couch with tea cups on a table in front of them. Paul McCartney sips from a cup and George Harrison holds a newspaper.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Get back indeed. On November 3, 2023, more than 25 years after the release of two new Beatles songs for the group’s multi-part Anthology documentary series (Free As A Bird and Real Love, which featured surviving members Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr lending accompaniment to a sparse John Lennon 70s-era demo), came what is being described as the last Beatles song ever: Now And Then.
During the Jeff Lynne-led reunion sessions in 1994, Paul, George and Ringo spent a little time laying down some ideas over John’s Now And Then demo before work ceased. Decades later, using film director Peter Jackson’s de-mixing technology, which allowed clear separation of John’s vocals on his rudimentary demo, Now And Then, produced by Paul McCartney and Giles Martin with additional production by Jeff Lynne, is given the grandiose ‘Fab Four’ treatment.
Source: Ken Sharp/loudersound.com
John Lennon said he lied about writing Beatles songs without Paul McCartney. One of his tunes became a hit when George Martin turned it into an instrumental.
John Lennon wasn’t always concerned with writing melodies. Despite this, he said two of The Beatles’ songs showed he could write melodies “with the best of them.” One of these tunes was a hit — but only after George Martin created an instrumental recording of it.
In a 1980 interview from the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, John discussed his role in The Beatles. “My contribution to Paul’s songs was always to add a little bluesy edge to them,” he said. “Otherwise, y’know, ‘Michelle’ is a straight ballad, right? He provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, the bluesy notes.” This balance between Paul’s sensibilities and John’s was the main magic of the Fab Four’s sound.
John didn’t always care about melodies. “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,” he remembered. “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.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
Marking the 40th anniversary of Yoko Ono Lennon and Sean Ono Lennon’s visit to The Salvation Army’s Strawberry Field in Liverpool in 1984, a commemorative stone in honour of John Lennon’s wife Yoko Ono and their son Sean has been unveiled today by Major Kathleen Versfeld, Mission Director at Strawberry Field at a special ceremony, together with a group of Steps to Work trainees.
The commemorative stone aims to recognise Yoko and Sean’s legacy in a poignant way and will be placed at the start of Strawberry Field’s Path of Peace, which is located within the gardens where John Lennon sought sanctuary as a child.
The granite stone includes a message which reads: “Strawberry Field remembers with love and gratitude Yoko and Sean’s visit 40 years ago and their ongoing generosity. Give Peace a Chance.”
John routinely entertained Sean with stories of Strawberry Field which was the inspiration for The Beatles hit, ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. Four years after his dad’s death in 1980, Yoko brought Sean to visit the site which was so special to his late father, where they were accompanied by Major David Botting who was Officer in Charge at the time.
Source: birkenhead.news
John Lennon is probably more posthumously famous than George Harrison. Paul McCartney discussed why this might be the case and he said it had nothing to do with their artistry.
All The Beatles are classic rock gods, but some are more famous than others. Paul McCartney said John Lennon is more posthumously famous than George Harrison. Paul discussed why this might be the case and he said it had nothing to do with their artistic outputs. Interestingly, John once contrasted himself with George as an artist. and his words were not completely flattering.
During a 2022 interview with The New York Times, a reporter noted that people tend to ask Paul more about John than about George. “John is probably the one in the group you would remember, but the circumstances of his death were particularly harrowing,” he said. “When you die horrifically, you’re remembered more.
“But I like your point, which is: What about George?” he added. “I often think of George because he was my little buddy. I was thinking the other day of my hitchhiking bursts. This was before The Beatles. I suddenly was keen on hitchhiking, so I sold this idea to George and then John.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
You know you’ve got something when you get too famous to tour. That was the case with the British-born rock band the Beatles at their height in the mid-to-late 1960s existence. The group was too famous, too big, had too many followers who would accost them out of sheer adoration. The former Mop Tops had to call it quits, which, in the end, gave them more time to write music. But thankfully there are a few shows out there recorded for the world to see when the boys from Liverpool were still playing live for fans. Here below are three such shows that every fan of the Fab Four should see and learn by heart. So, without further ado, dear reader, let’s dive in.
1. Australia (1964)
This 25-minute set shot in black-and-white features 10 songs from the fellas, performing tunes like “She Loves You,” “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “Twist and Shout.” Even playing down under, the screams from the fans are deafening. It’s hard to imagine anyone being able to get their head through a doorway with such appreciation. Yet, the Beatles carried on from tune to tune. Check it out here below.
Source: Jacob Uitti/americansongwriter.com
