Beatles News
Over the course of their impressive 10-year run, the Beatles released 12 studio albums (13 if you include 1967's Magical Mystery Tour in the core canon). The Fab Four's catalog improved with each new release, and one particular entry in their discography, considered by some to be their magnum opus, took the world by storm on this day 57 years ago.
'Abbey Road' by the Beatles Was Released on Sept. 26, 1969
The Beatles released Abbey Road on Sept. 26, 1969. The four-piece rock outfit's 11th studio album was actually recorded after their final record, Let It Be, but released before it. On Oct. 6, the band unleashed a double A-side single featuring "Something" and "Come Together" to promote it.
While the atmosphere was less tense than the Let It Be recording sessions, the group still had their fair share of disagreements, clashing over the album's presentation and Yoko Ono's presence in the studio. However, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr looked back on the process with fondness, and John Lennon had positive things to say about Abbey Road as a whole.
Infusing musical styles such as rock, pop, blues, and progressive rock, Abbey Road boasts two of George Harrison's best contributions: "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun." The album was a massive commercial success, topping a whopping 11 global weekly charts, including the US Billboard Top LPs and the UK Albums Chart. Abbey Road peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard chart on Nov. 1, 1969, where it reigned for 11 weeks. It also spent a remarkable 507 weeks total on said chart.
'Abbey Road' Then and Now
Source: yahoo.com/Melody McCune
Jane Asher’s love story with Paul McCartney is set to play out on screen in the forthcoming Beatles biopics – however, the actor won’t be queuing up to see it in cinemas.
Asher, 80, has revealed in a new interview that she has no plans to watch Lucy Boynton’s portrayal of her in Sam Mendes’s four films about the Beatles.
The Bafta nominee began dating McCartney in 1963, with the pair’s romance inspiring numerous songs for the group, including “And I Love Her” and “I’m Looking Through You”. They announced their engagement in 1967 but called it off a year later amid rumours of McCartney’s infidelity.
In Mendes’s forthcoming series The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event, which is due for release in 2028, McCartney is being played by Hamnet’s Paul Mescal, while Bohemian Rhapsody’s Lucy Boynton is portraying Asher.
In a new interview, Asher said that the filmmakers “approached me about it, of course, but I said my usual”, referring to how she no longer speaks about her relationship with McCartney.
When asked how she felt about Boynton playing her, she told The Telegraph: “Well, of course, Lucy is beautiful. But I won’t watch the films, otherwise everyone will ask me what I thought.”
Source: the-independent.com/Lauren Morris
When John Lennon was asked about the song "Wait" in 1970, he couldn't recall writing it. "That must be one of Paul's," he said then.
Paul McCartney did, however, recall. It was mainly his composition, though it was credited to the usual "Lennon-McCartney." His story was that it was written in early 1965 when the Beatles were in the Bahamas shooting Help! the film. Shortly before that, the band had connected with Brandon deWilde, a child actor whose career had blossomed into big sitcom roles (Jamie) and an Academy nomination (for his role in 1953's Shane) as an adult.
"Brandon De Wilde was an actor, a James Dean type," George Harrison recalled in Anthology. "He liked the Beatles' music and he heard we were going to film in the Bahamas, so he came over from the States with a big bag of reefer. We smoked on the plane, all the way to the Bahamas. It was a charter flight, with all the film people – the actors and the crew – and we thought, 'No, nobody will notice.' We had Mal [Evans, the Beatles' road manager] smoking cigars to drown out the smell." Brandon deWilde, Witness to 'Wait'
It was deWilde that McCartney, apparently, wrote the song "Wait" in front of.
"He was a nice guy who was fascinated by what we did," McCartney recalled in Many Years From Now. "A sort of Brat Pack actor. We chatted endlessly, and I seem to remember writing 'Wait' in front of him, and him being interested to see it being written."
Lennon didn't really factor in, in McCartney's memory: "I think it was my song. I don't remember John collaborating too much on it, although he could have."
Source: ultimateclassicrock.com/Allison Rapp
This year marked what would have been the 100th birthday of George Martin.
Martin, who died in 2016 aged 90, was the man who signed The Beatles and also the producer for the vast majority of their music during their remarkable eight years together. Who is the Fifth Beatle? George Martin, Brian Epstein, Pete Best and more
In the wake of the wave of Beatlemania, Martin also helmed a number of orchestral covers albums featuring Beatles hits.
These have long remained out of print, never being available on CD or streaming, but three of these records are finally being released next month on new formats and vinyl too.
All of them have been recut from the original tapes by Giles Martin, George's son who has inherited his role when it comes to the remastering and remixing of Beatles releases in recent years.
The albums are Off the Beatle Track (1964) and Help! (1965), in addition to ..and I Love Her (1966), which includes Beatles numbers alongside hits by The Rolling Stones, Petula Clark and other stars of the moment.
The albums will be released on November 6, and are trailed by 'Can't By Me Love' from Off the Beatle Track.
"These records came at a time when orchestral music had begun to embrace the sound of beat music - something it had initially dismissed as a 'noisy' genre, dismissing its integrity entirely," reads the blurb.
Source: goldradio.com/Mayer Nissim
Boston photographer Roger Farrington was flown to New York to document Lennon and Ono’s return to the recording studio in 1980. Now, he’s sharing the images in a new book. An unusual call sent a Boston photographer to New York to photograph John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Forty-six years later, he’s sharing the photos.
In August 1980, after a five-year hiatus from recording and releasing music, Lennon and Ono returned to the recording studio in New York to begin work on what would become Double Fantasy, Lennon’s final album.
On the day of their return, Boston photographer Roger Farrington received a call asking him to photograph the couple’s first recording session in five years. He was soon on a flight to New York.
Farrington spent the day photographing Lennon and Ono. The resulting images capture a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the couple months before Lennon’s death in December 1980.
Now, 46 years later, Farrington has published never-before-seen images from that day in a new book together with Beatles historian Kenneth Womack, giving fans a closer look at Lennon and Ono’s return to the studio.
Farrington will share his stories behind the photos with Womack and radio host Cha-Chi Loprete at the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame, housed in the Boch Center Wang Theatre, on Oct. 28.
Source: boston.com/Fiona Bright Holton
The Beatles not only wrote wonderful songs, but they also constantly innovated in terms of how they recorded them. Listening back to their catalog now, however, it’s fascinating to hear instruments that have long since fallen out of fashion adorning certain tracks of theirs.
These four songs are among the most beloved in the Fab Four catalog. And they all contain a key part from an instrument that’s a bit on the old-fashioned side, at least from our perspective today.
“We Can Work It Out”
Paul McCartney wrote the verses of “We Can Work It Out”. It’s one of several songs that he penned about his relationship with Jane Asher, his girlfriend throughout much of the 60s. John Lennon added the middle eight, his somewhat pessimistic outlook contradicting McCartney’s hopefulness. In terms of the music, it whooshes about behind McCartney’s main melody without calling too much attention to itself. But in the middle eight, which takes on a different rhythm from the rest of the track, you can hear a wheezing, accordion-like sound. That’s a harmonium, an organ-like keyboard with a pumping element that you don’t hear all that often today.
“Strawberry Fields Forever”
Most people who listen to the beginning of “Strawberry Fields Forever” assume that The Beatles hired a flautist. In actuality, that’s a keyboard instrument called a Mellotron. It was the closest thing that 60s bands had to a synthesizer. With recordings of other instruments essentially built into it, the Mellotron could mimic those other instruments without having someone actually play them. But the reproduction wasn’t quite exact, which lent this odd keyboard a kind of haunting quality. “Strawberry Fields Forever” features Paul McCartney playing a Mellotron on a flute setting. The Moody Blues, contemporaries of The Beatles in the British Invasion, made heavy use of the Mellotron in their music.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Jim Beviglia
The Beatles weren't exactly a cult band as 1965 ended. Their albums and singles dominated the pop charts. They played in front of more than 55,000 fans at Shea Stadium. They even conquered the big screen. Twice.
But Dec. 3, 1965, proved to be a seminal moment for the Fab Four – the release of Rubber Soul, the album where "the Beatles became the Beatles."
Widely considered one of the most influential albums ever made, it's hard to believe Rubber Soul was something of a rush job. The Beatles went into the studio in October 1965 to crank out an album in time for the holiday season. Despite the tight deadline, however, The Beatles decided to make their most audacious record yet.
"By the time of Rubber Soul, they were ready for new musical directions," said George Martin, The Beatles' long-time producer. "In the early days, they were very influenced by American rhythm and blues … and then, as time went on, other influences became apparent: classical influences and modern music."
Said drummer Ringo Starr: "We were all open to anything. You could walk in with an elephant, as long as it was going to make a musical note." While filming the movie Help! in April of 1965, guitarist George Harrison was introduced to the sitar, a stringed instrument that originated in the Indian subcontinent. The sitar solo Harrison added on Rubber Soul's "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" is believed to be the first time the instrument was featured on a Western pop recording.
That was just one classic moment on an album brimming maturity and innovation. Rubber Soul spawned classics such as "Drive My Car", "Nowhere Man" and "In My Life", the latter of which is considered one of the greatest songs of all time.
Source: yahoo.com/John Lembo
Then he describes that, as the meditator “reduces the thoughts below mental-thinking level,” he will eventually arrive “at a very subtle level which is beyond all relative experience” (there, at the quiet bottom of the ocean he’s sketched).
“This,” he writes, “we will call Transcendental Consciousness.
“As most of us haven’t experienced this state before,” he writes, “the first few times, you don’t even know that you have reached this state, because it isn’t a relative experience, and there’s nothing to compare it to, but from the very beginning—you will start to feel very relaxed, and start to get more energy—happiness and intelligence because the ‘pure state of consciousness’ is the reservoir of energy, happiness, and intelligence—and it is the place where we have got it all from in the past, but then it was unconsciously, and the meditation is a way of tapping this great natural source of energy, and consciously arriving at this level.”
Around the time George passed away, in 2001, I was making my first inroads into meditation, discovering all the wonders therein, and I found in my mind some trace of George, looking as he’d looked during his discovering-Maharishi era (white kurta, aviator shades, cowboy mustache), saying, reassuringly, “See? We were on to something back then. And now you’re on to it, too.”
To have seen this admired and beloved figure making his way down his spiritual path, humbly, insistently, happily, was a form of validation.I was not wrong, or lost, or losing my moorings; I was retracing steps George Harrison had taken. It was as if he’d scrawled a message on a doorway: Keep going; this leads to a profound place.
This was, we might say, a form of action at a distance—of generosity at a distance.
Source: vanityfair.com/George Saunders
There aren't that many accounts of John Lennon and Paul McCartney not agreeing on who wrote which parts of their songs. In fact, to a certain degree, it didn't matter — that's why the "Lennon-McCartney" songwriting name was established, since oftentimes it was hard to tell where one man's contribution ended and the other's began.
But for however synchronized Lennon and McCartney were, the reality is that two separate brains were at work when it came to their songwriting, and it did ultimately matter to each of them how those contributions were remembered. "In My Life" from the Beatles' 1965 album Rubber Soul is a clear example of this. One thing Lennon and McCartney did not disagree on was that "In My Life" originated with Lennon.
"'In My Life' started out as a bus journey from my house on 250 [sic] Menlove Avenue to town, mentioning every place I could remember," Lennon recalled to David Sheff in 1980. "And it was ridiculous. This is before even 'Penny Lane' was written and I had Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields, Tram Sheds – Tram Sheds are the depot just outside of Penny Lane – and it was the most boring sort of 'What I Did On My Holidays Bus Trip' song and it wasn't working at all. I cannot do this! I cannot do this! But then I laid back and these lyrics started coming to me about the places I remember."
It was then that McCartney came into the picture, as far as Lennon remembered it in a 1970 interview with Rolling Stone: "I think on 'Norwegian Wood' and 'In My Life' Paul helped with the middle eight, to give credit where it's due."
A decade later, Lennon doubled down on this memory when speaking with Sheff:
"Paul helped with the middle eight musically," he confirmed again. "But all lyrics written, signed, sealed and delivered. And it was, I think, my first real major piece of work. Up till then it had all been sort of glib and throwaway. And that was the first time I consciously put my literary part of myself into the lyric. Inspired by Kenneth Allsop, the British journalist, and Bob Dylan."
Source: ultimateclassicrock.com/Allison Rapp
During a 1963 visit to St. Louis, George Harrison found a record he couldn't stop thinking about. He even imagined the Beatles recording it. But despite his enthusiasm, the song never made its way into the band's repertoire. Harrison would eventually get another chance with it — 24 years later. It all stemmed from an early 1960s vacation.
“In 1963, the year before the Beatles first came to America, I took a trip to St. Louis to visit my sister, who was living there at the time,” Harrison wrote in The Beatles Anthology. “The whole Beatlemania thing had really begun in the U.K., and we’d had three or four hit singles.
“So while visiting my sister, I went around to all the music shops looking for new singles and especially albums that were really hard to find in Liverpool. And that’s where I finally found the James Ray album, If You’re Gonna Make a Fool of Somebody.”
In particular, the song that grabbed his attention most was “Got My Mind Set on You,” and Harrison thought it had the makings of a Beatles recording — despite one significant drawback. All the latest guitar news, interviews, lessons, reviews, deals and more, direct to your inbox!
“It would have been great for the Beatles to cover, except it wasn’t really rock and roll,” he admitted. “It was trying to rock, but it sounded like it was produced by a jazz musician — it had all these squawky horns and stuff.” As Harrison later recalled, the song “stuck in my mind.” More than two decades passed before he finally revisited it while working on Cloud Nine, his 1987 comeback album after a lengthy break from recording.
Produced by Jeff Lynne, Cloud Nine found Harrison returning to a more electric guitar–driven sound. Revisiting Rudy Clark’s song, he stripped away the brass-heavy arrangement that had bothered him in the first place and gave it a contemporary rock treatment.
Source: guitarplayer.com/Phil Weller
