Beatles News
Paul McCartney said he wrote a song for The Beatles’ The White Album with Donovan. The track was originally about the moon but it turned into a song with simple lyrics. Paul is a big fan of the song but it’s nothing compared to a Hollies song with a similar name.
Paul McCartney said one song from The Beatles’ The White Album has one of his best melodies. Notably, he said another rock star helped him write the song. Despite Paul’s feelings about the track, it’s nothing special.
“I remember sitting around with Donovan, and maybe a couple of other people,” he continued. “We were just sitting around one evening after our day of meditation and I played him this one and he liked it and we were trying to write some words.”
Paul and Donovan had difficulty writing words for “I Will.” “We kicked around a few lyrics, something about the moon, but they weren’t very satisfactory and I thought the melody was better than the words so I didn’t use them,” he said. “I kept searching for better words and I wrote my own set in the end; very simple words, straight love-song words really. I think they’re quite effective.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
John Lennon said The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “Rain” reflect his early sonic experiments. Paul McCartney said “Tomorrow Never Knows” contains some loops that sound like seagulls. The birdlike sounds are actually sped-up clips of Paul’s laughter. A seagull | Spencer Weiner / Contributor
The Beatles‘ “Tomorrow Never Knows” is one of the Fab Four’s most mystical songs. Paul McCartney said it sounds like seagulls. Despite this, the birdlike sound on the track is not actually the sound of seagulls.
John Lennon said some of The Beatles’ songs reflected the experiments he did at home
The book Lennon on Lennon: Conversations with John Lennon includes an interview from 1980. In it, John discussed how “Tomorrow Never Knows” came together. He said used to “make kinda freaky music at home” when he was still living with his first wife, Cynthia Lennon.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/imdb.com
John Lennon’s antiwar activism in his solo career caused people to see him as the most political member of The Beatles, but Paul McCartney said this was not the case. While Lennon might have been the most outspoken about politics in his solo career, McCartney claimed that he was the one to introduce political messages to the band. He explained that he felt more politically motivated after a conversation with Bertrand Russell.
A black and white picture of Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and John Lennon of The Beatles wearing black jackets.
The Vietnam War raged as The Beatles rose to success, but McCartney said they didn’t pay much attention to it. This changed after he met with Russell.
“Just when we were getting to be well-known someone said to me, ‘Bertrand Russell is living not far from here in Chelsea why don’t you go and see him?’ and so I just took a taxi down there and knocked on the door,” McCartney told Prospect Magazine in 2009. “There was an American guy who was helping him and he came to the door and I said, ‘I’d like to meet Mr Russell, if possible.’ I waited a little and then met the great man and he was fabulous. He told me about the Vietnam War — most of us didn’t know about it, it wasn’t yet in the papers — and also that it was a very bad war.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
By the late 1960s, George Harrison was ready to leave The Beatles and go off alone. Not only did he feel creatively stifled by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, but he was also fed up with the band’s business side. He wrote a few songs to air out his grievances, and one song he referred to as a ‘piss-take.’
“Only a Northern Song” is a Beatles track written by George Harrison that debuted on 1969’s Yellow Submarine soundtrack. The lyrics consist of Harrison sharing his discontent with The Beatles’ publishing company as he says none of the chords he’s playing or lyrics he’s singing matter since it’s “only a Northern song.”
In a 1999 Billboard interview (shared via Rolling Stone), Harrison wrote the song as a “piss-take” after realizing he owned none of his music and the business profits more from his work than he does.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
When Cynthia Powell first met John Lennon, she wasn’t impressed. In fact, she was turned off by his rude, boyish behavior. But she eventually fell for the future Beatle and did what she could to woo him. Part of their origin story, though, is a lie she told him after he asked her to dance.
The two both attended Liverpool Art College, where they met. When Cynthia first got acquainted with John, she brushed him off as not her type. He didn’t look like the clean-cut boys she was used to, and his behavior was devilish.
“His outspoken comments and caustic wit were alarming: I was terrified he might turn on me, and he soon did, calling me ‘Miss Prim’ or ‘Miss Powell’ and taking the mickey out of my smart clothes and posh accent,” Cynthia wrote in her 2005 book titled John.
When he wasn’t teasing Cynthia, John was often making fun of his teachers. This caused many of the Art College teachers to refuse him entrance to their classes.
“He’d give us a wicked commentary on the teacher,” she wrote, “or provoke hoots of laughter with his cruelly funny and uncannily accurate cartoons of teachers, fellow students, or of twisted, grimacing, malformed figures.”
Source: Kelsey Goeres/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney has been a longtime activist for animal rights. He is a well-known vegetarian and frequently tries to teach people about the benefits of not eating meat. While he became a vegetarian with his first wife, Linda, another inspiration for his love of animals came from Disney, who taught him some important life lessons.
Growing up in Liverpool, Paul McCartney ate meat frequently, as it was challenging to eat a veggie diet then. His first brush with vegetarianism came in 1968 during the Beatles’ trip to India. However, he didn’t commit to the lifestyle until the mid-1970s.
In an interview with The Guardian, McCartney shared when he became a vegetarian. He and Linda were eating meat when they looked out the window, saw a group of adorable lambs, and decided to stop devouring meat then and there.
“It was like, the penny dropped,” McCartney shared. “The light bulb lit up. We thought, ‘We might just give this up.’”
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney is an impressive musical talent who knows how to play numerous instruments, including the guitar, the bass guitar, the piano, and the drums. He hasn’t played the ukulele much in his songs, but he once surprised George Harrison by playing one of his most famous Beatles songs on the instrument.
George Harrison wrote “Something” for The Beatles’ Abbey Road. It’s a stunning love ballad that proved Harrison was capable of writing hit songs for the band, since his songwriting talents were limited with the fab four. Many famous artists, such as Frank Sinatra and Ray Charles, have covered it. However, the most surprising rendition might have come from his fellow bandmate, Paul McCartney.
McCartney performed the song in 2022 at Glastonbury, but before playing it, he told the crowd about a time when he played it on the ukulele for Harrison.
“I was round at his house one day,” McCartney said. “We were sitting there just jamming, and I said to him, ‘I’ve learned one of your songs on the ukulele. So we played it together that day, and we’d like to play it for you now.”
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
Drummer Ringo Starr was the last to become a member of the Fab Four, but his attitude was the central piece that held the Beatles together for a long time. He played a key role in ensuring the group did not end up like their mentor Elvis Presley at the height of their fame.
Ringo is considered one of the most famous and admired drummers ever because of his work with the Beatles, but he never allowed his achievements to get into his head. His calm and understanding nature came to bear when drummer Keith Moon who left The Who requested to become a member of the Beatles. However, Ringo was not bitter or sad about the development; he instead built a relationship that outlasted the Beatles itself.
Source: doyouremember.com
The Beatles’ “Flying” was inspired by 12-bar blues songs. Paul McCartney said it’s credited all members of the band because it’s not a real song. The tune appeared on the hit album Magical Mystery Tour.
The Beatles‘ “Flying” is a track with no lyrics that appears in the movie Magical Mystery Tour. Paul McCartney explained why the song features writing credits from all four of The Beatles. Subsequently, a notable band covered the song for a film based on Fab Four tunes.
In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul discussed the origin of “Flying.” “‘Flying’ was an instrumental that we needed for Magical Mystery Tour so in the studio one night I suggested to the guys that we made something up,” he said. “I said, ‘We can keep it very very simple, we can make it a twelve-bar blues. We need a little bit of a theme and a little bit of a backing.'”
Paul said he was instrumental in writing the tune. “I wrote the melody,” he said. “The only thing to warrant it as a song is basically the melody, otherwise it’s just a nice twelve-bar backing thing. It’s played on the Mellotron, on a trombone setting. It’s credited to all four, which is how you would credit a non-song.” Very few of The Beatles’ songs were credited to all four members of the band.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
It’s hardly a stretch to say The Beatles dominated the 1960s, especially from 1963 onward. Their energetic debut album, Please Please Me, bowled over young English music fans. The United States finally caught up nearly a year later with the Fab Four’s historic appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. The fact that The Beatles had 71 songs land in the top 100 of the Billboard singles chart is as impressive as their 20 No. 1 hits.
The Fab Four existed as a recording band for eight years, but their impact and success stretched well beyond that timeline. Need proof? Three of those top 100 songs came in the 1990s, and two of those were demos (“Free as a Bird” and “Real Love) released when their trio of Anthology albums saw the light of day. “Baby It’s You” also charted in the mid-1990s.
The Beatles found the top 100 three times in the 1970s, too. “Got to Get You Into My Life” and “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” found Billboard success in 1976, and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” hit the charts in 1978, more than a decade after the album hit shelves. “The Beatles Movie Medley” smashed seven songs from their feature films into a four-minute song. It peaked at No. 12 on Billboard’s charts in 1982.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
