Beatles News
Some John Lennon songs from 'Double Fantasy' sound like the 1950s. This was because John heard Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love."Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” inspired John Lennon songs. The former Beatle explained why Queen inspired him to start making music again. Notably, Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” was a bigger hit than John’s No. 1 song from that period.John released his final album, Double Fantasy, in 1980, five years after his previous album, Rock ‘n’ Roll. During a 1980 interview with the Los Angeles Times, John discussed new music. “I love the music of today,” he explained. “It’s the best period since the 1960s: The Pretenders, The B-52’s, Madness. Someone showed me a video of The Clash. They’re good.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney can't help but sing the praises of his eight grandchildren, or "chillers," as he calls them.
The Beatles legend is known as "Grandude" to his grandkids, who include daughter Stella McCartney's four children and daughter Mary McCartney's four sons. "One of my grandkids — who used to call me 'Grandad' — just happened one day to say 'Grandude' and it kind of stuck," McCartney told the BBC in 2019. "So the other kids started calling me 'Grandude.' "
McCartney has written two picture books, Hey Grandude! and Grandude's Green Submarine. Both were inspired by his grandchildren, with whom he enjoys dancing, making music and watching soccer.
"I'm really happy with how Hey Grandude! was received, as this was a very personal story for me, celebrating Grandudes everywhere and their relationships and adventures with their grandchildren," he told PEOPLE in a statement. "I love that it has become a book read to grandkids at bedtime all around the world."
Source:people.com
John Lennon was not a fan of one of Paul McCartney's songs. According to a Beatles engineer, he made his hatred of the song very clear.By the end of the 1960s, Paul McCartney was beginning to get on John Lennon’s nerves. All The Beatles found him domineering in the studio, overly focused on perfecting his songs. One of the songs he spent an exceptionally long time on was “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” He was a perfectionist about the production, much to his bandmates’ irritation. It didn’t help that Lennon disliked the song and did not try to hide it.
McCartney dragged The Beatles through endless takes of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” while working on the White Album.
“The previous week’s work was a typical study in frustration,” audio engineer Geoff Emerick wrote in his book Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles. “We’d worked endlessly on just two songs: Lennon’s ‘Revolution’ and McCartney’s ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,’ done over and over again until we were all sick to death of them. Nonetheless, here we were again, breathing in the same stale studio air, working on those same two tracks.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Yoko Ono said one of John Lennon‘s “(Just Like) Starting Over” was a message to all women. “(Just Like) Starting Over” made Yoko feel like crying. In addition, she said the tune had themes of renewal following the horrors of the 1970s.
John collaborated with Yoko on his final album, Double Fantasy. During a 1980 interview with the Los Angeles Times, she discussed the most successful track from that record. “I think John’s song, ‘Starting Over,’ is so beautiful,” she revealed. “It’s a personal message to me, but it’s also like all men saying to all women, ‘Let’s try again.’ It’s not going to be easy.”
Yoko gave her opinion on the state of gender relations. “In the ’60s, there was this sexual revolution which resulted in women waking up to the fact that it was a sexual revolution [only] for men and that women were really being used,” she said. “So, in the ’70s, women became very bitter, which was understandable. They didn’t want to just be ‘toys.’ So, there was this breakdown in relationships and the family.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
In early 2018, Quincy Jones sat down with Vulture's David Marchese for a romp of an interview that would soon set the internet ablaze. In less than 1400 words, the then-84-year-old legendary producer claimed that a "greedy" Michael Jackson had stolen songs and that he knew who killed John F. Kennedy and called modern pop nothing more than "loops, beats, rhymes and hooks." He also shared some choice words about the Beatles, calling them "the worst musicians in the world." Read on for details on his assessment of Paul McCartney's bass playing, the embarrassing Ringo Starr story he shared, and what he said when he called McCartney after the interview went live.
Source: Andrew Miller/bestlifeonline.com
The members of the Beatles are known for various feats, but the late great George Harrison has the record for releasing the song with the longest gap between jumping to No. 1, according to Far Out Magazine. George Harrison released “My Sweet Lord” in 1970, and it reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart at the time of its release. The song was part of Harrison’s album, All Things Must Pass, which also topped the charts.After Harrison passed away from lung cancer in 2001, “My Sweet Lord” experienced a resurgence.
The song reached the top of Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart once again two months after Harrison’s death, making the gap between the song’s first and second chart-topping weeks 31 years.At the time of Harrison’s death and “My Sweet Lord’s” resurgence, a spokesperson for EMI Records released a statement regarding the song’s newfound success. “We are very happy that the reissue of My Sweet Lord continues to spread George Harrison’s music and message around the world,” the spokesperson said (quote via Far Out). “It’s especially appropriate that the Material World Charitable Foundation, a charity that George set up some time ago will benefit from the profits made from the single’s success, thus helping the needy all over the world.”
Source: Jon Mendelsohn/americansongwriter.com
John Lennon wanted people to know the 1960s were over. In addition, he wanted people to know that World War II was over. During interviews, the former Beatle criticized nostalgia.
The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono features a 1980 interview. In it, John wanted people to stop caring so much about World War II and the 1960s. “The war is over and the ’60s is over and The Beatles is over and it’s all the same,” he said. “I’m not against the war or The Beatles or Paul, George, and Ringo. John made similar remarks about the 1960s in his song “God” from the album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.
“I’ve no ax to grind either way, but I don’t want to go to the reunion with Japanese fighter planes,” he added. “I don’t want to be one of those people meeting around the Messerschmitts and the Spitfires reliving World War II. I’m not interested in it, OK? It’s just irrelevant, absolutely irrelevant.” For context, Messerschmitts and Spitfires were both aircraft used in World War II. The former were used by the Nazis and the latter were used by the Allies.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
John Lennon. Paul McCartney. Ringo Starr. George Harrison. Each of them: an icon. Together, they were legendary! Formed in Liverpool in 1960, The Beatles remain — to this day — one of the most influential bands of all time.
If the fab four still rock your world, these Beatles-inspired dog names — lifted from old song lyrics and the band members’ storied lives — will have you humming every time you “Twist and Shout” for your dog. It’s the perfect way to pay tribute to your favorite band. After all, your dog won’t mind being named “Sgt. Pepper,” but your child sure will. Can you dig it?
Source: Jenna Wadsworth/yahoo.com
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
Our feelings about how things work in a recording studio are similar to our feelings about how things work on the training pitch at an elite football club. In both cases most of us will never be in a position to witness how this particular form of human interaction operates. In the absence of direct experience we combine our feelings about music — that it’s a matter of divine spark occurring between human beings with a shared purpose — and our feelings about people — that they are at their best when they are happy and inspired — to create a picture which satisfies our need to be emotionally invested in its making. In that sense, what Abbey Road represents in its position as the best-known and, from certain angles, the last recording studio in the world is a whole way of feeling about music.
Source: David Hepworth/bigthink.com
