Beatles News
In tribute to the producer, who would have celebrated his 98th birthday today, Radio X picks ten songs of his greatest knob-twiddling, string-wrangling, tape-reversing genius.
"Good George Martin is our friend / Buddy, Pal and Mate / Buy this record and he'll send / A dog for your front gate."
That’s how John Lennon paid tribute to the Beatles producer in the sleeve notes to Big George’s orchestral album of Fab Four tunes, Off The Beatle Track, back in the halcyon days of 1964. Here at Radio X, we’d like to pay tribute to the late musician, arranger and producer, who died aged 90 in March 2016, by picking a handful of tracks that demonstrate his knob-twiddling genius. Thanks George - it wouldn’t have been the same without you.
Twist & Shout (from the album Please Please Me, March 1963)
Source: Martin O'Gorman/radiox.co.uk
When The Beatles left Hamburg, Paul McCartney said his father hardly recognized him. The experience had completely worn him out.
Paul McCartney and the rest of The Beatles grew tremendously as musicians while performing in Hamburg. While they all acknowledged that the experience shaped them into better performers, it wasn’t always easy. McCartney said that his father could hardly believe his appearance when he returned home to Liverpool. His time in Hamburg had reduced him to a skeleton.
Though Hamburg was a valuable learning experience for The Beatles, it was also an exhausting one. They slept in cramped, uncomfortable quarters and played onstage for hours each night. John Lennon admitted he used to get so tired he would fall asleep onstage.
“My voice began to hurt with the pain of singing. But we learnt from the Germans that you could stay awake by eating slimming pills so we did that,” Lennon said in The Beatles Anthology. “I used to be so pissed I’d be lying on the floor behind the piano, drunk, while the rest of the group was playing. I’d be on stage, fast asleep. And we always ate on stage, too, because we never had time to eat. So it was a real scene … It would be a far-out show now: eating and smoking and swearing and going to sleep on stage when you were tired.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Since you are reading this in a senior publication, there’s a good chance that you not only remember Ringo Starr’s “You’re Sixteen” from 50 years ago, but the original 1960 version by Johnny Burnette, as well.
Burnette was born in 1935 and lived with his parents and brother Dorsey in a Memphis housing project that included equally poor neighbors Vernon, Gladys and Elvis Presley.
After school days ended, music lovers Johnny, Dorsey and a mutual friend formed the hard-driving Johnny Burnette Trio. They toured constantly and recorded some high-octane 45s that went nowhere. (Rockabilly collectors now lust after those obscure plastic discs.)
Later, Johnny and Dorsey Burnette moved to Los Angeles to become songwriters for Ricky Nelson (“Believe What You Say,” “It’s Late”). As a solo artist, Johnny Burnette signed with Los Angeles’s Liberty Records and proceeded to cut some minor hit singles.
Burnette’s only Top 10 career tune was the bouncy, violin saturated “You’re Sixteen,” which ended up on the best-selling soundtrack of George Lucas’ 1973 nostalgia movie “American Graffiti.” In 1964, Johnny Burnette died in a California boating accident.
Source: Randal C. Hill/vieravoice.com
On This Day, January 2, 1969…
The Beatles began rehearsals for what would wind up being their final studio album together, Let It Be.
Rehearsals took place at Twickenham Film Studios and were marred by tension within the band, which was captured on film as cameras were recording the sessions for a documentary.
Let It Be was released in May 1970 along with the documentary of the same name, which featured The Beatles’ unannounced rooftop concert, their last public performance together. The album, which featured such classic Beatles songs as the title track, “Get Back” and “Across the Universe,” went to #1 in the U.S., the U.K. and several other countries.
The footage from the Let It Be documentary was later used by director Peter Jackson for the Emmy Award-winning docuseries The Beatles: Get Back, which was released in 2021.
Source: ABC News/kshe95.com
After a busy year, Sir Paul McCartney sat down to answer 23 fan questions on his official website.
Asked what his highlight of 2023 was, the 81-year-old didn’t hesitate to say: “The GOT BACK tour!”
As for what is his favourite song to play live on his solo tour, which has been to Oceania, Mexico and South America this year, he chose a Beatles classic.
He replied: “Probably Hey Jude, just to see all those thousands of people singing in harmony with each other.”
Admitting that his favourite does “vary” from time to time, he’s certainly not short of choices.
Another fan asked: “Would you ever release a soundcheck album featuring some of the covers you do before the live show?”
McCartney replied: “It’s a thought! We have the ‘jams’ – we always start the soundcheck with a made-up piece, and there’s a lot of them. So, we might go through those and do something someday.”
Check out the full list of questions here.
Source: George Simpson/express.co.uk
Best of 2023: There’s a memorable scene in Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary Get Back where a microphone concealed in a pot of flowers in the dining room at Twickenham Studios picks up a discussion between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. It’s early afternoon on Monday 13 January, 1969 and the pair are discussing the sudden departure of George Harrison from The Beatles and an unsuccessful meeting the previous day to try and resolve the situation.
“It’s a festering wound and yesterday we allowed it to go even deeper and we didn’t give him any bandages,” observes Lennon drolly. “I do think that he’s right,” concedes McCartney, “that’s why I think we’ve got a problem now.”
Harrison left after McCartney allegedly accused him of “vamping” on the rehearsals for the song Get Back. But there was a deeper issue at stake. By then Harrison had emerged as a songwriter of real merit. Wedged between two mercurial talents, both unable to rescind creative ground, he doggedly and delicately chose his moments to push his own material forward.
Source: Neil Crossley/musicradar.com
George Harrison was sued for "My Sweet Lord," and saw his bandmates from The Beatles go against him in court.
George Harrison was sued for his song "My Sweet Lord" sounding too similar to "He's So Fine" by The Chiffons.
Harrison claimed he was not aware of the similarity and would have made changes if he had known.
John Lennon seemed to side with The Chiffons, while Ringo Starr defended Harrison in the lawsuit.
Made up of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, The Beatles are the biggest and best band to make it in music. Though their time together was short, the band changed the face of music, leaving a lasting impression on pop culture as a whole.
Eventually, the guys all took to solo careers, and each of them found success. This includes George Harrison, whose double album propelled him to solo stardom, and showed the world that he was an underrated part of the band's success.
Source: Anthony Spencer/thethings.com
On December 31, 1970, Paul McCartney sued John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr in the High Court of Justice in London, England for the legal dissolution of the band’s partnership. At the time, McCartney’s move may have been considered the beginning of the end of The Beatles, but it ultimately salvaged the band’s control over their music catalog, ownership of Apple Corps Limited, and more through the present day.
“I was thought to be the guy who broke The Beatles up and the bastard who sued his mates,” said McCartney in 2020. “And, believe me, I bought into that. It was so prevalent that for years I almost blamed myself.”
Problems first arose when the band hired New York City accountant Allen Klein as their manager shortly after forming Apple Corps in 1968.
The rest of the band (Lennon, Harrison, and Starr) wanted to work with Klein, who founded ABKCO Music & Records Incorporated and had previously managed Sam Cooke in the early ’60s and was also working with British acts like Herman’s Hermits and Donovan.
Source: Tina Benitez-Eves/americansongwriter.com
If this New Year’s Celebration at Times Square follows the pattern set since 1986, just before the ball drops and we turn our calendars forward, someone will sing John Lennon’s classic song, "Imagine." It is a good thing to close out the past and look to the future by imagining the world as it could be.
John Lennon sat down at his piano in Berkshire, England one morning in early 1971 and composed the song that became his most popular single. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation named it the greatest song of the last 100 years. Australians chose “Imagine” as the greatest song of all time. But for many of us, there is a greater vision of how the world could be.
Every time we quote the Lord’s Prayer, we are invited to imagine the world as it is meant to be. Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven ….” What would the world look like if that prayer were answered? How would the world differ from the world we know?
If God’s will were done on earth, there would be no more crime. Theft, violence and murder would end. Prisons would empty. Neighbor would no longer sue neighbor. Court dockets would clear.
Source: timesrecordnews.com
During John Lennon and Yoko Ono‘s 1969 bed-in-for-peace recording of “Give Peace a Chance,” at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the couple had an unexpected guest performing along with them. Joining Lennon on guitar was Tommy Smothers of the Smothers Brothers.
Lennon and Smothers had become friends years earlier and shared similar social and political views. Smothers, who died on December 26, 2023, at the age of 86, naturally connected to the anti-war sentiment of Lennon’s protest song since his father was a U.S. Army officer who died in 1945 as a prisoner of war in Japan.
Smothers, along with his brother Dick, never shied from giving a comical spin to socio-political issues penetrating the late ’60s, including their opposition to the Vietnam War and views on civil rights, and more on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The repeated censorship of the show by CBS ultimately led to its demise just two years after its premiere.
Source: Tina Benitez-Eves/americansongwriter.com
