Beatles News
Ringo Starr’s affability made him well-loved amongst The Beatles and their fans. Before Starr was a part of the group, though, the other Beatles found him more than a little intimidating. He was slightly older than his future bandmates, but his reputation was the point of concern for them. Even John Lennon admitted that he had been afraid of Starr before he knew him.
Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison had been working together for several years by the time Starr joined The Beatles. They had been playing in Hamburg alongside bass player Stuart Sutcliffe and drummer Pete Best. At the same time, Starr was performing in the city with his group, Rory Storm & the Hurricanes. The Beatles got to know Starr, and they all had a similar first impression.
“We started hanging out with them,” Harrison said, per The Beatles Anthology. “I think we’d met Ringo once before, in England. I know we all had the same impression about him: ‘You’d better be careful of him, he looks like trouble.'”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
John Lennon was the most revealing and introspective member of The Beatles. Many of his songs revealed details of his past or brought to life emotions he kept trapped inside. These types of tracks were even more prominent in his solo career. One song he wrote for The Beatles was for his mother, with whom he had a troubled history.
John Lennon was born to Julia and Alfred Lennon on Oct. 9, 1940. His father abandoned him as an infant, leaving him alone with his mother. After receiving complaints from social services, Julia gave custody of John to her sister, Mimi, but the two still had contact. In 1958, a car struck and killed Julia when John was just 17.
The memory of his mother became a creative inspiration for the young singer. While The Beatles were initially a pop-rock band, they later wrote more experimental and sincere music. Many of these songs debuted on The White Album, which featured many songs written individually by every member. One song is “Julia”, which Lennon said he wrote about his mother.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/Ross Tanenbaum
No matter your opinion of Paul McCartney, you can’t deny he’s a prolific songwriter. He’s written more than 1,000 songs in his career, though the real total is probably higher. John Lennon admitted he liked only one of Macca’s Beatles pieces, and the bassist could be just as critical of his own work. Paul was harsh on his song “Live and Let Die,” and he was 100% wrong.
Paul McCartney sitting on a stool playing acoustic guitar during an April 1972 TV special in which he performed the James Bond theme song 'Live and Let Die.'
Wings, Paul’s band after The Beatles, was still relatively new in 1973. The group formed and released their debut album in 1971. The solid follow-up Red Rose Speedway landed in early 1973, and the smash hit Band on the Run followed later that year.
Paul wrote “Live and Let Die” during the 1972 Red Rose Speedway sessions, but it didn’t hit record stores until mid-1973 when the James Bond movie came out. Macca wrote the song quickly after reading the book Live and Let Die, on which the movie was based. Beatles producer George Martin recorded it and composed the orchestral arrangement. Still, Paul still didn’t think much of “Live and Let Die.”
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
During a recent press conference with his All-Starr Band ahead of their tour launch, Starr revealed that he’s working on a new country EP. The project started when legendary singer/songwriter and producer T Bone Burnett sent him a song he couldn’t refuse.
“He sent me, I promise you, one of the most beautiful country songs I’ve heard in a long time,” Starr raved to American Songwriter and other media. “It’s very old school country, it’s beautiful. So I thought, ‘I’m going to make a country EP.’ A lot of my life has changed by the moment that comes into it and then I thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to do that.’ So that’s what I’m doing.”
The former Beatle has been a longtime fan of the genre, so much so that he released his first solo country album, Beaucoups of Blues, in 1970. Recorded in Nashville, the album reached the Top 40 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart. As a member of the Beatles, he was the lead singer on their cover of Buck Owens’ “Act Naturally” and co-wrote the country-leaning 1965 B-side, “What Goes On.”
Source: Cillea Houghton/americansongwriter.com
Two complete sets of Beatles autographs along with snapshots of Sir Paul McCartney and George Harrison will be auctioned. The signatures were collected by two then-teenage fans at gigs in Coventry and Nottingham in 1963.
The snapshots were taken at a stage door in Coventry before the Fab Four took to the stage.Both collections were expected to each fetch up to £4,000 at auction in Lichfield, Staffordshire, on 6 June.
The first set of autographs were collected when the Beatles performed at the Elizabethan Ballroom above the Co-op on Upper Parliament Street in Nottingham.
Patricia Florio's father was the Co-op's chief security manager at the time and she went to the concert with him and got their signatures in her autograph book.
"My grandad got to meet a lot of celebrities in his job and the autograph book is a wonderful piece of memorabilia," Mrs Florio's daughter, Bridget Gray said.
The book is being sold along with other memorabilia from the time including postcards of the Beatles.
The second set was collected by Gwen Payne, 74, when she was 14 and went with friends to the Coventry Theatre on 17 November 1963.
Source: Allen Cook/bbc.com
Paul McCartney was just one fourth of the iconic rock band The Beatles, all of whom rose to fame in the early 1960s and spent about a decade in the spotlight before breaking up. Though the young quartet’s uprising was exciting in the moment, some say it eventually went to their heads, with disagreements ensuing and friendships nearly ending before the band finally decided to call it quits.
Paul McCartney has had plenty of years to reflect on his actions surrounding Beatles fame — one of which included suing the other band members, which he says was the only way he could “save The Beatles.”
The Beatles’ rise to fame was something nobody could have seen coming. The band achieved worldwide recognition so quickly, and with a fan base so obsessive, that the whole movement was dubbed “Beatlemania.” And when the fame didn’t slow down through the 1960s, the bandmates eventually ran into disagreements, with McCartney and Lennon, the band’s two primary songwriters, having a major falling out by 1970.
Source:Julia Mullaney/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder's duet 'Ebony and Ivory' was one of the biggest songs of 1982.
"Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony."
At a time when the fear and famine during the apartheid era were rife, and racial tensions closer to home continued to bubble, people certainly didn't live in harmony.
It was this tension which inspired Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder to collaborate on one of the biggest songs of the 1980s: 'Ebony and Ivory'.
The 1982 ballad about racial harmony was an enormous hit, and brought together two of the most iconic artists in the history of pop music.
But why did Macca and Wonder choose to join forces, and how? What was the meaning behind the chart-topper and how was it received?
Source:smoothradio.com
Ringo Starr and his bandmates have taken a break from rehearsing for their first show of the year to field reporters’ questions in a Zoom call, doing all they can to crack each other up while interacting more like old friends than a member of the world's most famous rock band and his latest batch of hired guns.
Rehearsals have been going great as they get reacquainted with the staples of an All-Starr Band performance, from the drummer’s own material to Edgar Winter singing “Free Ride” or Colin Hay dusting off Men at Work’s “Who Can It Be Now?”
“Yesterday, we ran the whole show and I feel ready to rock,” Starr says.
Toto guitarist Steve Lukather says he’s been “having the time of my life in this band, always have.”
Second drummer Gregg Bissonette says they’ve been “having the greatest time playing the greatest songs with the greatest — my drum hero, my dear pal. What a ball. What an honor."
Source: azcentral.com
George Harrison wasn’t afraid of revealing the vulnerabilities and flaws in his music. In 1974, his marriage to Pattie Boyd was unraveling, and he struggled with alcoholism and drugs. While Harrison didn’t speak about this time often, he did write a song that expressed what he went through during this period. Pattie Boyd and George Harrison married in 1966. Boyd experienced Beatlemania’s highs and lows and the band’s eventual downfall. She left Harrison in 1974, but the pair didn’t officially divorce until 1977. She then married Harrison’s friend, Eric Clapton, in 1979. After Harrison and Boyd’s marriage unraveled in 1974, the former Beatle was in a dark place where he dealt with drinking and drug use. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Harrison admitted he went on a “bender” after he split from Boyd, and many of the songs on Dark Horse, including “Simply Shady”, are manifestations of his experience during this period.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
John Lennon didn’t understand The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” when he wrote it. The song is more straightforward than John claimed. The tune appeared on the seminal album Revolver.
John Lennon said he didn’t understand The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” when he wrote it. Subsequently, he said it was up to others to analyze The Beatles’ songs. John put “Tomorrow Never Knows” in the same category as another Fab Four song which is very different.During a 1968 interview with Rolling Stone, was asked about analyses of his songs. “Well, they can take them apart,” he replied. “They can take anything apart. I mean I hit it on all levels, you know. We write lyrics, and I write lyrics that you don’t realize what they mean till after. Especially some of the better songs or some of the more flowing ones, like ‘[I Am the] Walrus.’ The whole first verse was written without any knowledge.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
