Beatles News
The Beatles ripped up the rulebook in many ways.
One of these was that, after their first album was rushed together to cash in on their first couple of hits, they decided not to put singles on albums, or to issue album tracks as singles. The reason for this was simple: they felt it was unfair on fans to have to buy the same song twice.
They didn’t stick to the rule religiously – for example, both their movie soundtrack albums (1964's A Hard Day’s Night and Help! from the following year) feature singles, as they were put out to promote the films.
But had they wanted to, they could easily have doubled their total of number one hit singles. Here, we break down which songs they could have used – it’s hard to imagine any of them not hitting the top spot.
The Beatles themselves only really controlled what was released in their native UK. Other territories could issue their songs however they chose, so for the purposes of this article, we only focus on what was (and wasn’t) a single in their home country.
1. Twist & Shout (1963)
Most people would be forgiven for thinking that ‘Twist & Shout’ was a Beatles original, but they’d be wrong. This staple of their live show was actually a cover version of the 1962 Isley Brothers hit – itself a cover of a 1961 recording by a group called The Top Notes – produced by Phil Spector.
And although The Beatles’ UK and US record labels (Parlophone and Capitol respectively) never issued ‘Twist & Shout’ as a single, Chicago’s VeeJay label had picked up the rights to some of their 1963 recordings after Capitol had initially passed on the band. And so it did come out as a single in the US on a subsidiary of VeeJay, where it was one of five Beatles songs in the top five on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1964.
Source: classical-music.com
The collaborative spirit of the former Beatles shines through in the music they created together after the band's split.Los Angeles Today
After the Beatles broke up, John Lennon continued to write songs for his former bandmate Ringo Starr's solo albums. Lennon penned the opening track 'I'm the Greatest' on Ringo's 1973 album, as well as other songs like '(It's All Down to) Goodnight Vienna' and 'Cookin' (In the Kitchen of Love)' on later releases. These collaborations marked a reunion of sorts for the former Beatles members.
Why it matters
Ringo Starr's solo career allowed the former Beatles members to continue working together, even after the band's acrimonious split in 1970. Lennon's songwriting contributions to Ringo's albums show the enduring creative partnership between the two musicians, despite the tensions that had developed within the band.
The details
On Ringo's 1973 self-titled album, Lennon wrote the opening track 'I'm the Greatest,' which featured all three of Ringo's former bandmates - Lennon, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney. Lennon also wrote '(It's All Down to) Goodnight Vienna' for Ringo's 1974 album of the same name, and played piano on the track. For Ringo's 1976 album Ringo's Rotogravure, Lennon contributed the song 'Cookin' (In the Kitchen of Love),' which he also played piano on.
A founding member of the Beatles who went on to have a successful solo career after the band's breakup in 1970. He continued to collaborate with his former bandmate Ringo Starr on several of Ringo's solo albums in the 1970s.
Source: nationaltoday.com
In the early Beatles days, John Lennon—like so many young twenty-somethings trying to find themselves—often used humor and wit to deflect attention from his true feelings. As a ruffian cutting his teeth in Liverpool, Lennon certainly learned how to don a necessary layer of armor over his soft interior. It wasn’t until the mid-1960s, with songs like “Help!” and “Strawberry Fields Forever”, that Lennon started leaning into his truth.
But there were few Beatles tracks quite as heartbreakingly sincere as the late-era single, “Don’t Let Me Down”. Although credited to the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership, both Lennon and Paul McCartney would later clarify that it was earnestly Lennon’s.
“It was a very tense period,” McCartney later explained to Barry Miles. “John was with Yoko [Ono] and had escalated to heroin and all the accompanying paranoias, and he was putting himself out on a limb. I think that, as much as it excited and amused him, at the same time, it secretly terrified him. ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ was a genuine plea.”
“Don’t Let Me Down” Gains Even More Power Within the Greater Context
To say 1969 was a tense period for The Beatles is an expectedly British understatement from Paul McCartney. The band was experiencing its first highly public, highly contentious breakup, complete with lengthy, arduous legal proceedings that distracted them from the one thing they wanted to do in the first place: make music. Professional obligations aside, these four men were also experiencing fundamental shifts in relationships they had had since they were in their late teens and early twenties.
For the John Lennon who wrote “Don’t Let Me Down”, it’s easy to see how he could feel as if he were stepping out onto a wobbly tree limb. He had already established a future with his second wife, who was also his creative collaborator.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Melanie Davis
“The Beatles” and “heavy metal” are largely regarded as residing on opposite ends of the musical spectrum. But every so often on a rogue 1960s track, the Venn diagram between these two phenomena became nearly circular. Songs like “Helter Skelter” and “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road” come to mind, and certainly post-Beatles songs from John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Plastic Ono Band could qualify.
What this writer wouldn’t expect is that the song Lennon once cited as the first heavy metal record would come from their 1965 album, Help! Smack dab in the middle of the decade, we were still years away from the heavy offerings of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple. Not even The Beatles were that far into their experimental, psychedelic phase by that point. But they were getting close.
And according to Lennon, “Ticket To Ride” was the band’s first foray into heavy (or, perhaps more accurately, relatively heavier) rock ‘n’ roll. The song boasts Lennon and Paul McCartney’s signature harmonies and a syncopated rhythm section with accompanying drone notes that foreshadowed their later works. But was it actually heavy metal?
According to John Lennon (And the Times), That Answer Would Be Yes
As genres evolve and intensify, it’s only natural that the “first” versions of that style become paler by comparison. Sure, “Ticket To Ride” by The Beatles doesn’t seem like heavy metal now. But as John Lennon put it in Anthology, the song was “slightly a new sound at the time. It was pretty f***ing heavy for then, if you go and look in the charts for what other music people were making. You hear it now, and it doesn’t sound too bad. It’s a heavy record, and the drums are heavy, too. That’s why I like it.”
Source: americansongwriter.com/Melanie Davis
Entertainment legend, global philanthropist and friend of Maya Angelou, Oprah Winfrey has achieved every dream she ever had — except for one.
In a Tuesday appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Winfrey spoke about how she’s been fortunate to have every one of her wildest wishes come true. The only one that never came to fruition was ending up with her teenage crush.
“Everything I ever wanted or dreamed came true,” Winfrey said. “Except, I did not marry Paul McCartney.“
The media mogul goes on to share that, growing up, she was the only girl she knew who loved The Beatles as much as she did. She even collected Beatles trading cards. And of course, like every fangirl she had a favorite member of the band.
“Of course Paul was my favorite Beatle. And I used to try to make him think of me,” Winfrey says, clutching her fists and remembering. “I used to wake in the morning and I’d stand on the stairs and say, ‘Think of me, think of me, think of me.'”
Unlike most other fangirls, however, Winfrey actually got to know her childhood crush one day. She shares that, years later, when she got the chance to interview the rock legend, she took the opportunity to ask him the question that’s been burning in the back of her mind since childhood.
“My first question to him was, ‘All those years, I was 14, and I was thinking of you. Did you ever once think of me?'” she recounts. McCartney’s reply is one that every fan hopes to hear one day: “Every day, babe, every day.”
Though Winfrey never got the chance to marry her favorite Beatle, the two of them did participate in a very special ceremony together one day. In 2010, both entertainers were awarded with Kennedy Center Honors. One of Winfrey’s favorite memories of that big night occurred not when she received her honor, but when The Beatles’ Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 “Hey Jude” began playing.
“[McCartney] took my hand,” she said. “And that was the dream I had all those years!”
Source: billboard.com/Annie Harrigan
Paul McCartney ranks as one of the most successful rock musicians of all time. He has earned that honor in several ways, as multiple acts he’s been a part of — The Beatles, Wings, and of course McCartney as a soloist — have enjoyed years-long runs as hitmakers and powerful sellers.
Later this spring, the celebrated rocker will deliver a new album titled The Boys of Dungeon Lane. The set, expected in late May, will mark his first solo release in more than half a decade, and it is bound to do great things on charts globally. The first single from the project, “The Days We Left Behind,” arrives on one Billboard tally this frame, and it earns the superstar one more American top 10.
“The Days We Left Behind” only manages to appear on a single list published by Billboard this frame, and while McCartney and his label were surely hoping for a more impressive response in America, the fact that the cut debuts inside the top 10 should be counted as a win. This frame, “The Days We Left Behind” opens at No. 7 on the Rock Digital Song Sales chart, which details the bestselling tunes classified by Billboard specifically as rock via platforms like iTunes and Amazon.
Source: forbes.com/Hugh McIntyre
Farhan Akhtar has been tapped to play Ravi Shankar, legendary sitarist and composer, in Sam Mendes' four films based on The Beatles singers. Netizens have been buzzing with enthusiasm ever since Sony Pictures, the films' distributor, announced the news. Funnily enough, some even mistook Ravi Shankar for the spiritual leader of the same name, wondering how Farhan would fit into the role because he hardly looks like the spiritual guru. Now that the record has been set straight, the question still remains as to what role Ravi Shankar played in The Beatles.
What is Ravi Shankar's connection with The Beatles?
The legendary sitarist had a decades-long history with The Beatles' guitarist George Harrison. He taught Harrison how to play the sitar. Interestingly, Ravi Shankar once did not know anything about The Beatles, not even about its existence. Ravi asked Harrison whether he would like to accompany him to India and learn the instrument, and he gracefully obliged. When Harrison came to India, he changed his identity to Mr Sam Wells, but he could not sustain the disguise because people here recognised him. Due to the constant attention, Harrison cut off his hair and grew a moustache upon Ravi's advice and accompanied the latter to Srinagar.
Source: cinemaexpress.com/Cinema Express Desk
What would an artist be without their first record? Although The Beatles would go on to have plenty of No. 1 albums throughout their career, it was Please Please Me that got them started and catapulted them into the spotlight forever. Here are three favorite tracks from the album that The Beatles put together while they were still figuring out what it even was to be “a Beatle.”
“There’s A Place”
“There’s A Place” is one of The Beatles’ more sing-alongy songs, in my opinion. The song actually draws inspiration from “Somewhere” in the musical West Side Story, where Tony meets Maria at her window after the Rumble, during which he kills her brother, Bernardo.
“Someday” sings, “Someday, somehow / We’ll find a new way of living / We’ll find there’s a way of forgiving / Somewhere / There’s a place for us / A time and a place for us /Hold my hand and we’re halfway there.”
“In our case, the place was in the mind, rather than round the back of the stairs for a kiss and a cuddle,” McCartney explains of “There’s A Place” in Many Years From Now.
“Baby It’s You”
“Baby It’s You” has this doo-wop groove that makes you feel like you’re listening to something straight from the jukebox. That’s probably because, before The Beatles did their own spin on it, “Baby It’s You” was first recorded by The Shirelles, a popular 60s girl group. The Beatles were big fans of that type of music, and so when they were finishing up Please Please Me, they chose to finish it off with a couple of covers. “Baby It’s You” made the cut.
“I Saw Her Standing There”
Source: americansongwriter.com/Kat Caudill
One has to wonder: Did the Beatles know they were about to record one of the most influential songs in rock history when they stepped into the studio 60 years ago this week?
"Tomorrow Never Knows," the last track on Revolver, was actually the first song to be recorded for the album, according to the Beatles Bible, with sessions taking place on April 6, 7, and 22.
The title (which doesn't actually appear anywhere in the song) came from one of Ringo Starr's sayings, while the lyrics were inspired by the 1964 book The Psychedelic Experience by Harvard psychologists Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert.
In Leary's introduction, John Lennon read the words, "turn off your mind, relax, float downstream" (which, of course, became the first line of "Tomorrow Never Knows").
As Paul McCartney recalled in Anthology, the song was "definitely John's."
"Round about this time people were starting to experiment with drugs, including LSD," he explained. "John had got hold of Timothy Leary’s adaptation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which is a pretty interesting book. For the first time we got the idea that, as with ancient Egyptian practice, when you die you lie in state for a few days, and then some of your handmaidens come and prepare you for a huge voyage. Rather than the British version, in which you just pop your clogs. With LSD, this theme was all the more interesting."
'Tomorrow Never Knows' helped shape the sound of modern music.
Source: yahoo.com/Jacqueline Burt Cote
The venue that hosted The Beatles' only concerts in Japan has released long-forgotten photos of the legendary British band six decades after the gigs.
At the height of Beatlemania in 1966, when the quartet was the world's most famous pop group, the Beatles staged five summer performances in Tokyo in front of screaming fans.
Crowds reportedly thronged their hotel, where they stayed in the finest suite.
Then in 2009, more than 100 photos shot during the gigs "were discovered on a shelf" inside an office at the concert venue Nippon Budokan, the arena's operator told AFP.
But the 19 rolls of negative film -- reportedly wrapped in paper and labelled in such a way that it suggested they belonged to Japanese newspaper the Yomiuri Shimbun -- remained "stored as they were" until recently, the operator in a statement.
However, as the 60th anniversary of the Japan tour approached, the venue operator asked a Beatles expert to examine the negatives, and "his assessment revealed that the photos appear to have never been published" in newspapers or other media.
Among the photos released by the concert venue is a shot of John Lennon smiling beside a Japanese doll that resembles a figurine featuring on the album cover of the 1967 album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band".
Source: thestandard.com.hk/The Standard 英文虎報
