Beatles News
In a Paris hotel room, Paul snapped a black-and-white selfie in a mirror. On the street, his friend John leaned into the camera frame, striking a goofy and almost schoolboy-like pose shortly before they jetted to America on a trip that would change their lives and millions of others’ forever.
World culture was indefinitely altered when they and the rest of the Beatles in February 1964 stepped off a plane onto a New York City tarmac, to a real-life soundtrack of shrieks from the several thousand young women who’d gathered. In America, Paul snapped a picture of newsmen chasing after their car and photographed the photographers who took pictures of him. Out of New York, he used color film to get a bright portrait of a shirtless George in Miami Beach. Once he even went bokeh, using the effect to capture an artistically blurred Ringo Starr smile.
Paul McCartney was a prolific photographer as a Beatle, and 250 of his images are making their U.S. debut in Norfolk at the Chrysler Museum of Art. This exhibition consists of photos he made shortly before and during the band’s first trip to the U.S., providing a taste of the private side of Beatlemania — the Fab Four during their downtime, the quieter moments in between grand adventures.
Source: Colin Warren-Hicks/pilotonline.com
The Beatles are back at #1: The band’s new single, “Now and Then,” tops the Billboard Adult Alternative Airplay chart for the very first time.
The Adult Alternative Airplay chart launched in 1996, and The Beatles have landed on it one other time — when 1996’s “Free as a Bird” peaked at #11. They now hold the record for the longest time between their first appearance on the AAA chart and their first #1.
In other Beatles news … Sir Patrick Stewart recounted a sweet story of meeting Paul McCartney during an appearance on Live with Kelly & Mark.
He was in Bristol working in an acting company with McCartney’s then-girlfriend Jane Asher and during lunch one day they were playing a game where they shared what they’d buy if they had 1 million pounds; Stewart chose an Aston Martin. Two weeks later, McCartney showed up at Stewart’s dressing room.
“The door opened and there was Paul McCartney and he said, ‘Jane tells me that you like Aston Martins. Here, drive this,’” Stewart recalled, noting he was in his underwear at the time. “He threw me a bunch of keys.” Stewart said they went out on a joyride in the middle of the night and drove about 18 miles together to Bath, England.
Source: mikeeves@wxhc.com
One of Ringo Starr's albums was going to feature songs written by John Lennon. While discussing this record, Ringo shrugged off the nostalgia fans had for the Fab Four.
One of Ringo Starr‘s albums was going to feature songs written by John Lennon. Ringo decided not to use them, but he still recorded songs for that album by George Harrison and Paul McCartney! While discussing this record, Ringo shrugged off the nostalgia fans had for the Fab Four. John made similar comments about The Beatles around the same time.
During a 1981 interview with Rolling Stone, Ringo discussed his album Stop and Smell the Roses, originally known as Can’t Fight Lightning. “I asked all my friends to help on Can’t Fight Lightning,” Ringo recalled. “George did a couple of tracks, Paul’s done a couple of tracks. But the real drag is that there were tracks made for me by John.”
Ringo decided not to use tracks written for the album by the recently-deceased John. “I won’t use them now, though,” he said. “Well, I might. You never can tell. But they won’t be on this album. The fun was going to be that we’d play together, you know? And we could play real well together — even in 1981.” The final version of Stop and Smell the Roses uses zero John compositions.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
John Lennon and George Harrison grew close in The Beatles. Harrison said that their use of LSD greatly improved their friendship.
When George Harrison met John Lennon, he began to idolize him. Harrison was several years younger than Lennon and wanted to spend as much time as possible with the older boy. As they aged, their relationship changed through their collaboration in The Beatles. While Harrison often felt frustrated with Lennon, he also said that he felt closer to him than his other bandmates. Here’s what contributed to this shift in their relationship.
In the mid-1960s, every member of The Beatles took acid. Paul McCartney was the most cautious about the drug, but Lennon and Harrison took it often. Harrison thought that this improved their relationship.
“After taking acid together, John and I had a very interesting relationship,” Harrison said in The Beatles Anthology. “That I was younger or I was smaller was no longer any kind of embarrassment with John. Paul still says, ‘I suppose we looked down on George because he was younger.’ That is an illusion people are under. It’s nothing to do with how many years old you are, or how big your body is. It’s down to what your greater consciousness is and if you can live in harmony with what’s going on in creation.”
Source:Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
In 1961, the 18-year-old George Harrison purchased his first American-made guitar, a 1957 Gretsch Duo Jet, from a former merchant seaman named Ivan Heyward, for 75 pounds sterling, after he saw an advertisement in the Liverpool Echo. After giving it good use on “Please Please Me” and “I Saw Her Standing There,” he eventually passed it to his old friend from the Beatles’ days in Hamburg, Germany, the artist/musician Klaus Voormann. When Harrison was ready to shoot the cover for his new album Cloud Nine in 1987, he retrieved his “old black Gretsch” from storage in Los Angeles, had it refurbished, and posed with it, smiling widely in front of a stratospheric backdrop. You couldn’t see his eyes because of the light flare in his sunglasses, but it’s pretty clear from the content of the album they were twinkling with mischief.
Source: Mark Leviton/bestclassicbands.com
May Pang, left, who had a relationship with John Lennon, during a period when he was separated from Yoko Ono, will share photos from that time in a show at AnArte Gallery.
For decades, complete strangers have told May Pang they knew all there was to know about her and her 18-month relationship with John Lennon.
“I’ve had many fans or people, they all say, 'I know everything about you,' and I say, 'You do? ' And they go, 'Yes, I’ve read everything,'” Pang said in a telephone interview. “After so many years, my story took on a life of its own, with other people telling it. At first, it doesn’t bother you, but after a while, now it’s bothering me. Now people are hearing different stuff that’s not correct.”
Pang has been working to set the record straight about her time with the former Beatle. They were together from 1973 to 1975 when he was separated from Yoko Ono, an era in his life dubbed “the lost weekend.”
Source: Deborah Martin/expressnews.com
Paul McCartney‘s hit-making abilities are something of a marvel. It’s no surprise he has secured nine No. 1 songs throughout his career, given he pretty much wrote the book on how to craft a timeless pop offering. Below is our definitive ranking of McCartney’s Billboard Hot 100 hits.
9. “Listen To What The Man Said“
First up we have “Listen To What The Man Said.” We have no qualms with this track. It’s fun and a good listen but we find it to be a little less powerful than some of the other hits on this list.
8. “With a Little Luck“
“With a Little Luck” features a rhythmic melody that is hard not to sing along to. It’s a little quirky and very ’70s, but we see why it was such a hit amongst McCartney fans upon its release. That being said, it’s not one of McCartney’s signature tracks, meaning its appeal hasn’t been as long-lasting as some of his other No. 1’s.
Source: Alex Hopper/americansongwriter.com
Paul McCartney discussed John Lennon's role in writing The Beatles' "I Am the Walrus." Some of Paul's comments are a little questionable.
Paul McCartney discussed John Lennon’s role in writing The Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus.” Some of Paul’s comments are a little questionable. Regardless, “I Am the Walrus” is one of the key tracks of John’s career.
During a 2009 interview with Clash, Paul discussed his feelings about “I Am the Walrus.” “I think in a way, for instance something like ‘I Am the Walrus,’ someone like John probably doesn’t get enough credit, because those sessions, those preparatory sessions, were very important because they set the style and often gave very accurate briefs of what we wanted,” he opined.
“For instance, all of John’s ‘Everybody’s got one’ and ‘Ho ho ho, hee hee hee, ha ha ha’ [from ‘I Am the Walrus’], all that stuff was from John at a session with [The Beatles’ producer] George Martin, a preparation session,” he added. “We’d be around at John’s house or George’s house, and he’d say, ‘I want to go, ‘Ha ha ha.’ So, George would write all that in the score, and John would sort of say, ‘Well, it could go like that or like that,’ but we couldn’t write so we needed George to translate our thoughts. That was how it worked, and ‘Eleanor Rigby’ came about that way — it was going to be another classical foray, but different from ‘Yesterday.'”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
This story is the second in a two-part series about travel destinations of interest to fans of The Beatles, including a magnificent place I found ‘accidentally’… Read the first part here.
New York City is where John Lennon put down roots in 1971, and where his life was tragically taken nine years later. Right next to Central Park is The Dakota, the historic apartment where he lived with Yoko Ono. I’ll admit it was a little strange to stand across the street from that building, seeing the entranceway where he was shot, and have it feel eerily familiar after seeing it depicted so many times in the media.
Tucked inside the park is Strawberry Fields, a five-acre memorial landscape honouring Lennon’s life as a musician and peace activist. The Imagine mosaic is a peaceful place to stop and reflect, or just sit and watch “the wheels go ’round and ’round” around you.
Source: RoseAnna Schick/winnipegfreepress.com
See the trailer to the three-part Apple TV+ docuseries, narrated by Kiefer Sutherland, examining the aftermath to the Beatles legend’s assassination
There have been a number of eye-opening Beatles documentaries through the years, from the Beatlemania doc Eight Days a Week; a tribute to the Fab Four’s loyal secretary, Good Ol’ Freda; Martin Scorsese’s poignant George Harrison: Living in the Material World; and last but certainly not least, Peter Jackson’s recent eight-hour opus Get Back, chronicling the recording of the group’s final album, Let It Be, and subsequent demise.
Now, we have what hopes to be the definitive documentary about the aftermath of Mark David Chapman’s 1980 assassination of John Lennon outside the Dakota.
Premiering Dec. 6 on Apple TV+, and narrated by Kiefer Sutherland, the three-part docuseries John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial features new information gleaned from FOIA requests, as well as the first on-camera interviews with a number of people surrounding the tragedy, including Richard Peterson, a taxi driver/witness to the shooting; the Dakota concierge who desperately tried to save Lennon’s life; and Dr. Naomi Goldstein, the first psychiatrist who assessed Chapman.
Source: Marlow Stern/rollingstone.com
