Beatles News
John Lennon was the most controversial Beatle, but Paul McCartney also had moments when the public turned against him. These days, most people view him in a positive, near-reverent light, but he’s courted controversy. Here are three times McCartney found himself in hot water with the public.
In 1969, Lennon announced he was leaving The Beatles, but the group kept this news quiet.
“There was all sorts of weirdness going on where record contracts were being negotiated, and our not-so-good manager at the time, this guy called Allen Klein, he was saying, ‘Don’t tell anyone because I’m in the middle of a negotiation,'” McCartney said in an interview with Apple Music. “I was saying, ‘You’ve gotta tell ’em.’ You can’t pretend the group’s still together. We’re gonna get a new record when we all know it’s not gonna happen.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney was the first Beatle to publicly announce that he wasn’t returning to the band, but by this point John Lennon had already told the group that he was quitting. Lennon had grown tired of working with the band and was ready for a new project with his new wife, Yoko Ono. His decision to move on came after years of working closely with McCartney. Though they had a fraught public relationship after The Beatles broke up, Lennon admitted that he felt guilty about leaving McCartney.
Though McCartney has long shouldered the blame for breaking up The Beatles, Lennon left the group first. The band had been dealing with simmering tensions and resentments for a while, and they reached a fracturing point when Lennon announced he was quitting.
“John walked into the room one day and said, ‘I’m leaving the Beatles,’” McCartney recalled on BBC Radio 4, per CNN. “And he said, ‘It’s quite thrilling. It’s rather like a divorce.’ And then we were left to pick up the pieces.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
John Lennon was the least emotional member of The Beatles. He rarely complimented his bandmates and often wrote many of the band’s more dour songs. However, he once gave Ringo Starr a song to sing, which Paul McCartney said showed his “tender side.”
“Good Night” is a song from The Beatles’ The White Album written by John Lennon, but features Ringo Starr on lead vocals. In an interview with David Sheff, Lennon said he initially wrote the tune for his son, Julian, but he decided to give it to Starr.
‘Good Night’ was written for Julian, the way ‘Beautiful Boy’ was written for Sean… but given to Ringo and possibly overlush,” Lennon said.
In a 1968 interview, Starr noted that the song sounded very different from anything else Lennon has written. It sounds more like a track by McCartney, but Starr cleared things up.
“Everybody thinks Paul wrote ‘Goodnight’ for me to sing, but it was John who wrote it for me,” Starr said. “He’s got a lot of soul, John has.”
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
The Beatles have hundreds of fascinating stories involving how they recorded their music. The band had many innovative recording techniques but also did some weird tricks to boost the studio’s atmosphere. During a recording session for one of The Beatles’ more hardcore songs, George Harrison started a fire and ran around the room.
“Helter Skelter” is one of the most hardcore songs by The Beatles. Many consider this song from The White Album to be one of the earliest examples of heavy metal. However, it was a change of pace for The Beatles, who often made calmer and lighter rock music. In an interview with GQ, Paul McCartney said he made “Helter Skelter” after reading comments by Pete Townshend of The Who.
“I can see why people would think it was the precursor of heavy metal,” McCartney said. “How it came about was I had read in a music paper that The Who had done a really heavy track, and Pete Townshend of The Who was quoted saying, ‘We’ve just made the dirtiest, loudest, filthiest song ever.’ So, I was kind of jealous. I didn’t hear their song. I still don’t know what song he was referring to, but I went in the studio, and I said, ‘Guys, we’ve got to do a song that’s dirtier and filthier and louder than The Who.’”
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
It was a sweet slice of cultural history and, at the same time, evidence of an unlikely clash of English social classes. The discovery of a tape recording of an early Beatles concert made in 1963 at a Buckinghamshire private school last week has astonished music experts and fans alike.
And now the crackling, hissing 60-year-old tape, complete with audible banter from the Fab Four, is to be restored for wider listening, according to the BBC journalist who uncovered the story, Samira Ahmed. The former student who made the tape, John Bloomfield, hopes to have it enhanced with the same kind of technology that has recently improved other early Beatles demo tapes and first studio takes.
Source: Vanessa Thorpe/theguardian.com
The Beatles did have some odd songs in their discography. Tracks like “I Am the Walrus” and “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” are perfect examples of when the Liverpool band got weird. One of their most bizarre deep cuts came from Paul McCartney, who wrote and performed it while in an “experimental mode.”
“Wild Honey Pie” is a solo recording from Paul McCartney. It’s a less-than-one-minute track that the artist wrote while in India. It’s a strange track that sounds like many instruments are being bashed together while McCartney annoyingly repeats the titular phrase.
According to McCartney, they weren’t sure what to do with “Wild Honey Pie”, but George Harrison’s wife, Pattie Boyd, liked the song so much they decided to keep it in the album.
“[‘Wild Honey Pie’] was just a fragment of an instrumental that we were not sure about, but Pattie Harrison liked it very much, so we decided to leave it on the album,” McCartney said.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
Outside of Lennon-McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr formed their own songwriting partnership in The Beatles. They continued working together for decades after the band’s split. They trusted each other as musicians and knew exactly what they’d get when they asked each other to appear in songs. Here are 10 of the best collaborations between George and Ringo, in and out of the recording studio.
10. ‘Octopus’s Garden’
Ringo wrote “Octopus’s Garden” after sailing one day in 1968. He ordered fish and chips, and they accidentally gave him squid. Ringo’s feelings about the tensions between The Beatles are expressed in the lyrics like, “I’d like to be under the sea.” He wanted to be anywhere else but in the recording studio with them. However, he did let George help him throughout the songwriting process.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
Many of The Beatles’ fans were shocked and devastated when the band announced they were splitting up. However, behind the scenes, it was inevitable as tensions between the band members rose. While it’s hard to pinpoint the exact reason why The Beatles called it quits, there are a few songs that hint at their dissolution.
“The Ballad of John and Yoko” was a single released in 1969 that chronicled the events of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s wedding, along with their honeymoon activities that included the infamous “bed-in” peace protests. The track featured only Lennon and Paul McCartney. George Harrison and Ringo Starr didn’t skip the track out of spite but because it felt like a track specifically for Lennon.
While this song didn’t create turmoil within The Beatles, it was a sign that Lennon was becoming more interested in creating music with Yoko rather than his fellow bandmates. In Anthology, producer George Martin said “The Ballad of John and Yoko” was evidence that John Lennon had already “mentally left the group.”
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
John Lennon and May Pang's relationship is the subject of an upcoming documentary.
Premiering on April 13, the documentary "The Last Weekend" will focus on The Beatles member's 18-month romance with his and Yoko Ono's secretary. The film will hit theaters amid Pang's busy photo exhibitions in New York and Philadelphia.
In the documentary's preview, the now-72-year-old artist recounted her time with the late singer, including her refusal of Ono's offer to become Lennon's girlfriend.
In 1973, Pang started working as Lennon and Ono's personal secretary. But she had a more intimate relationship with the "Hey Jude" crooner, although she disapproved of it at first.
Speaking about the scenes in "The Last Weekend" preview, Pang told People how Ono asked her to fill the time she would be away from Lennon because she "wanted time apart." With that, she aimed for Pang to become Lennon's new girlfriend until she comes back.
According to Pang, she respected their marriage so much that she refused to do it. She added that she was already happy being their secretary.
Source: Angeline Sicily/musictimes.com
In 1970, nearly a year after John Lennon left the band, Paul McCartney announced that The Beatles were no longer collaborating. Not long after, McCartney filed a lawsuit against the band. He wanted to take control of the catalog from their manager, Allen Klein. The rest of his bandmates vehemently opposed him in this, but they eventually realized that he was right. Lennon admitted this on this day in 1973.
The Beatles began working with Klein after the death of their longtime manager, Brian Epstein. McCartney had never wanted Klein as their manager, instead pushing for Lee Eastman, his father-in-law. He didn’t trust Klein, so in 1970, he sued the band to regain control.
“The only way for me to save The Beatles and Apple — and to release Get Back by Peter Jackson which allowed us to release Anthology and all these great remasters of all the great Beatles records — was to sue the band,” McCartney told GQ. “If I hadn’t done that, it would have all belonged to Allen Klein. The only way I was given to get us out of that was to do what I did.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
