Beatles News
Last month, a British band topped the U.K. charts with its new single, reaching number 2 in America, behind only Taylor Swift; they also landed two albums in Billboard’s Top 20.
That’s a decent showing for a band that broke up 50 years ago.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, once again, The Beatles are back. The new song, “Now and Then,” and the expanded Red and Blue greatest hits albums join a world that has seen at least three dozen podcasts, a never-ending library of books, the latest a biography of the band’s roadie Mal Evans that runs nearly 600 pages, along with a parade of documentary programs like “McCartney 3,2,1,” and, most notably, Peter Jackson’s revelatory “Get Back.”
Meanwhile, in Ireland, two diehard fans, Steven Cockcroft and Jason Carty, could arguably be described as the Beatles of Beatles podcasters.
After winning the 2018 “Beatle Brain of Ireland” quiz, they launched “Nothing is Real,” their own podcast for all things John, Paul, George and Ringo. Since then, they’ve had three million downloads in the last three years, won PodBible’s 2022 Music Podcast of the Year Award and, Cockcroft says, “inexplicably,” were a No.1 music podcast recommendation in the New York Times this summer.
Source: Stuart Miller/redlandsdailyfacts.com
Despite many believing there to be resentment between John Lennon's sons, Julian Lennon said rumours of a feud between him and half-brother Sean Lennon are "such bull.
Being the sons of John Lennon must come with as many pros as it does cons.
Of course, there's the luxury of life being The Beatles' superstar's offspring. But that comes with the weight of the band's legacy, and the expectation of such a legacy.
Coupled with the fact that Julian Lennon and Sean Lennon lost their father at such a young age, you could understand why the pair's lives might be anything but normal.
The half-siblings also may've had a fractured relationship over the years, given the nature of Julian's upbringing.
Born to John and Cynthia in 1963, Julian was left with just his mother to raise him effectively after John eventually moved on with Yoko Ono.
Source: Thomas Curtis-Horsfall/goldradiouk.com
Paul McCartney said Elvis Presley was different from everyone else on the cover of The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’. His comments might surprise fans.
Even though Elvis Presley deserved to be there, he’s not on the cover of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Paul McCartney explained why this was the case. Interestingly, some of the “Hound Dog” singer’s contemporaries are on the album cover.
The cover of Sgt. Pepper pays tribute to people from all fields, including non-fiction writers, fiction writers, actors, athletes, political leaders, and religious leaders. Surprisingly, only a handful of these figures are musicians. Headshots of 1960s icons Bob Dylan and Dion DiMucci are visible on the record, and a doll wears a shirt reading “Welcome The Rolling Stones Good Guys.” Singer-actors like Shirley Temple, Diana Dors, and Marilyn Monroe are part of the artwork as well. Despite this, the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll is nowhere to be seen.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney's death rumor lasted years, and just wouldn't go away.
Paul McCartney decided not to address the rumor of his death and saw it as good publicity.
The rumor got out of hand with media members tracking down McCartney on his farm.
John Lennon angrily called out the Detroit radio station for making up the rumor and denied any coded messages in Beatles records.
During the '60s, The Beatles faced lots of stresses. One of them was completely unexpected, and it was the rumored death of Paul McCartney. The rumor blew up in the US after it was reported by a radio station in Detroit. The result was absolute chaos, as media members went out to find Paul McCartney, trying to confirm his identity.
As we'll reveal in the following, McCarntey didn't panic over the rumor. We'll reveal how he initially reacted, and how he was eventually fed up with the entire story. We'll also reveal John Lennon's reaction, who was just as frustrated with the story that lasted years.
Let's take a look back at how it all went down.
Source: Alex Passa/thethings.com
I am writing with reference to the letter published on December 2, ‘In my life ... an ode to Christmas’. Regarding John Lennon’s song In My Life – from The Beatles’ 1965 album Rubber Soul – Bernie Smith said, “Lennon was a supreme wordsmith writing about his friends and lovers whom he would never forget...”
Steve Turner, in his book A Hard Day’s Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles’ Song (Revised Edition, 1999), discovered that Lennon’s lyrics share the style and sentiment of Charles Lamb’s 18th-century poem, The Old Familiar Faces. The first and last stanzas go like this:
“I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days,
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces ...
“How some they have died, and some they have left me,
And some are taken from me; all are departed;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.”
Paul McCartney said Lennon wrote the lyrics for In My Life, based his melody on the previously covered Smokey Robinson song, You Really Got a Hold on Me.
Source: jamaica-gleaner.com
The day the Julian Lennon album Valotte was released in 1984, my older brother and I pooled our lawn-mowing money and rode our bikes to Record Express in West Hartford, Connecticut. Our local top-40 station, 96.5 WTIC FM, was playing “Too Late for Goodbyes” every other song—MTV too—and we had to have it.
I still have the album. He’s on the cover, black-and-white, sitting backward on a chair, staring out at you, unsmiling. I know now, though I didn’t know then, how much he looks like his father in that shot. I was 9 years old. The album was probably my gateway to the Beatles, the first lesson in an education.
Lennon surrounded by reporters in 1984, the year his album Valotte was released. It earned him a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, and "Too Late For Goodbyes" became a number-one hit. Some speculated that the song was about his father.A year ago, I interviewed Lennon. The Beatles documentary Get Back had just come out, and Lennon had seen it with his half-brother, Sean. (Sean’s mother is Yoko Ono; Julian’s was Cynthia Powell, John Lennon’s first wife.) The interview was meant to be part of a larger project about what it’s like to have a song written about you. “Hey Jude” was written by Paul McCartney about Julian and Cynthia; a friend of mine, Chadwick Stokes of the band Dispatch, had recently written a song about me and my family and some hard times. That project is for another day; here, now, is my interview with Lennon. In it, he told me about his new record that was coming out. The title: Jude.
Source: Ryan D'Agostino/esquire.com
The Chrysler Museum of Art will present Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm from December 5, 2023 – April 7, 2024. Traveling from the National Portrait Gallery in London to Norfolk, the Chrysler Museum of Art will be the first venue in the United States to host this major exhibition, burnishing the Chrysler’s reputation as an institution committed to the presentation of the diverse histories of photography through exhibitions and the permanent collection.
Captured by McCartney using his own Pentax Camera, the exhibition features more than 250 photographs taken between November 1963 and February 1964, illuminating the period in which The Beatles became international superstars. The photographs were rediscovered in McCartney’s personal archive in 2020. McCartney describes this collection as “the eyes of the storm,” chronologically documenting the experiences of the band on their travels beginning in November 1963 at the height of Beatlemania and culminating with photographs taken in February 1964 during the final days of the band’s first triumphant trip to America. Most of these photographs have never been made into prints, existing as negatives and contact sheets for 60 years until now. The exhibition is accompanied by a best-selling book of the same name.
“What struck me about these images, beyond their obvious historical value, was McCartney’s sensitivity to his subjects,” said Erik Neil, Macon and Joan Brock Director of the Chrysler Museum of Art. “The empathy that is at the center of his music is equally evident in his photographs.”
Source: visitnorfolk.com
The release of the last Beatles song, “Now and Then,” ranks among the band’s pivotal moments such as their 1964 U.S. television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show and the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. The idea of a “final” Beatles song is a milestone; the most successful band in the history of popular music rallied together to give us one final masterpiece.
The Beatles have always captured our imaginations. Seeing the surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, interact with past images of themselves and their former bandmates in Peter Jackson’s “Now and Then” video is worth the price of admission. And hearing Paul harmonizing with John Lennon once again is emotional. It’s right up there with other Beatles reunion tracks from the 1995 Anthology series, “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love.”
Jackson’s innovative video features footage from the original 1995 sessions of Paul, George, and Ringo working on Lennon’s “Now and Then” demo. For me, seeing “The Threetles” together in the studio brought back the memory of another song featuring the surviving Beatles.
Source: Sean Gaillard/culturesonar.com
Paul McCartney's rider demands might be stricter that the rules he enforces on his employees.
Fans find Paul McCartney's rules for his staff to be professional and logical, not "beyond weird."
Many fans praised McCartney's calm security team rule as a genius idea.
Fans appreciate McCartney's desire to have a variety of instruments ready for studio sessions, considering him admirable and awesome, not weird.
He is among the biggest names in all of music. Paul McCartney continues to enjoy a remarkable career, past his fame and fortune with The Beatles.
However, like so many other artists, the musician needs to implement strict rules for his staff to follow. In the following, we're going to take a closer look at what those roles are, and if they're indeed, "beyond weird."
Fans don't seem to think so. We'll reveal what the fans had to say, while also taking a closer look at his rider demands. We can argue that the rider demands might be a little more difficult than his current rules for the employees.
Let's find out what they are, and more.
Source: Alex Passa/thethings.com
Back in 1976, the world was still hurting from The Beatles’ break-up and during the first ever season of the now-iconic US show Saturday Night Live, the producer took it upon himself to do something about it. Lorne Michaels delivered a speech about the Fab Four directly to camera, saying, “I’m inviting you to come on our show” and imploring Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr to put their differences behind them and reunite. Adding a little extra incentive, Michaels then whipped out a cheque for $3000 – not an amount to be sniffed at back then – and said it would be theirs if they came back together on SNL.
It was, like most of SNL’s output, a gag intended to entertain and stir things up, but what Michaels didn't know was that two of the band were watching and actually considered it. As recounted in Man On The Run, Tom Doyle’s excellent book about McCartney in the 70s, Lennon and McCartney were actually watching the show together that night in Lennon’s Dakota building apartment, just 22 blocks north of where it was being filmed. They were, writes Doyle, “laughing their asses off and, just for a minute, actually considering his offer. ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if we went down?’ said John. ‘We should go down now and just do it.’”
Source: Niall Doherty/yahoo.com
