Beatles News
Ringo Starr joined The Beatles significantly later than his bandmates, so he didn’t live through some of their earliest experiences as a group. He also wasn’t on all the songs they recorded, though this continued to happen after he joined the band. For various reasons, Starr was not the drummer on five Beatles songs.
Soon after joining the band, Starr joined them in the studio to record “Love Me Do.” He struggled with timekeeping, though, much to the frustration of producer George Martin. Ultimately, Starr’s version of “Love Me Do” made it on the album, but he wasn’t so lucky with another song.
“They started ‘PS I Love You.’ The other bloke played the drums and I was given the maracas,” Starr said in the book The Beatles: The Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies. “I thought, that’s the end. They’re doing a Pete Best [the drummer Starr replaced] on me.”
Starr explained that while his name is on the song, he played maracas while a session musician played drums.
“When the record came out as a single, my name was on ‘PS I Love You,’ but I was only playing the maracas, the other bloke was on drums,” he said. “But luckily for me, they decided to stick to the first version of ‘Love Me Do,’ the one in which I’m playing drums, so that was okay.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Ringo Starr and John Lennon always had a close friendship. They were the two oldest Beatles members, lived as neighbors, and hung out together after the Fab Four fractured. The drummer was the last Beatle to see John before he died, and Ringo was blown away by his mindset at the time. Years earlier, John’s singing freaked out Ringo, and we understand where the drummer is coming from.
The Beatles split up in 1970, but that didn’t prevent the former bandmates from working together. Ringo played drums on George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass in 1970. He sat at the kit for John’s John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band solo debut the same year. Though used to recording with the bespectacled Beatle, some of John’s behavior in the studio freaked out Ringo, he writes in Postcards From the Boys:
“I can say this now (if he was here, John could tell you), but suddenly we’d be in the middle of a track, and John would just start crying or screaming — which freaked us out at the beginning. But we were always open to whatever anyone was going through, so we just got on with it.”
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison’s “Any Road” draws from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Jefferson Airplane did the same for “White Rabbit.”
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers did the same for “Don’t Come Around Here No More.”
George Harrison‘s “Any Road” is based on a paraphrase of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Specifically, the song was inspired by a conversation between Alice and the Cheshire Cat. Subsequently, the tune became a hit in the United Kingdom but not the United States.
According to the 2021 book War Time: Temporality and the Decline of Western Military Power, the line “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there” from “Any Road” is a paraphrase of Carroll. The line appears to be based on a passage from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, more commonly known as Alice in Wonderland. The passage begins with Alice encountering the Cheshire Cat.
“She was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off,” Carroll wrote. “The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought: still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
While John Lennon and Paul McCartney were in their own little world being one of the greatest songwriting partners in music, George Harrison and Ringo Starr were forging a perfect partnership of their own.
George helped Ringo with classic Beatles songs like “Octopus’s Garden.” Despite the strange time signature of “Here Comes the Sun,” Ringo knew how to enter the song perfectly. The Beatles’ split did not affect their working relationship whatsoever. They continued collaborating as if nothing had happened.
Whenever George asked Ringo to play on one of his songs, he knew the drummer would do his best.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
Ringo Starr grew up in a poor section of Liverpool and became an international star because of his drumming talent. Artistic honors and musical halls of fame inductions followed for The Beatles’ timekeeper. Ringo made the most obvious statement when he said his life was like a fairy tale. Yet recording at Ringo’s house was hardly a dream come true for visiting musicians.
Barbara Bach (left), Ringo Starr, and their dogs pose on the lawn outside their house in 1981.
Ringo’s London apartment was like a playground for his friends. Paul McCartney recorded music there. Jimi Hendrix rented it. John Lennon and Yoko Ono shot the cover art for Two Virgins there.
The Beatles’ drummer eventually moved out and became neighbors with John. Later, Ringo bought John’s house — named Tittenhurst Park — (and burned all his leftover possessions) after the Fab Four finally fractured, but he rarely stayed there. The timekeeper lived in Monaco, crashed with John in Los Angeles, and jetted around the globe in the 1970s.
When Ringo and his wife, Barbara Bach, decided to settle down at Tittenhurst, it made using the estate’s home studio torture for visiting bands.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
On a warm day in September 2022, alongside 40 or so press colleagues, I was treated to an advance demonstration of the Dolby Atmos mix of The Beatles' Revolver, at Republic Studios on Broadway In New York City's midtown. Producer/mixer Giles Martin—son of original Beatles producer Sir George Martin—was our host. Giles Martin's demeanor was self-deprecating, and he seemed to know all there is to know about the Beatles and their productions. As Martin played songs from Revolver in surround sound, the assembled group seemed amazed by what they heard.
Played through a JBL-based 7.1.4 system in a conference room (footnote 1), "Tomorrow Never Knows," Revolver's final track (which, however, was the first to be recorded), was transformed. Based on texts from The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead and employing radical elements including musique concrète, avant-garde composition, and tape loops, the effect of this new, spacious soundfield—on an album known for its claustrophobic production—was shocking. At the front of the mix, Lennon's vocal was large; it came across with more texture and nuance than I'd ever heard.
Source: Ken Micallef/stereophile.com
The earliest known full recording of The Beatles playing a live show in the UK has been found almost exactly 60 years after it was made.
As BBC News reports, the hour-long quarter-inch tape recording was created by John Bloomfield at Stowe boarding school in Buckinghamshire on April 4, 1963 when the Fab Four performed there.
Bloomfield, who is now 75 years old, was only 15 at the time. He revealed the existence of the tape when journalist Samira Ahmed visited Stowe to make a special programme for Radio 4’s Front Row to mark the gig’s 60th anniversary.
“It was a unique Beatles gig, performed in front of an almost entirely male audience,” Ahmed wrote of the discovery. “And crucially, despite loud cheers and some screaming, the tape is not drowned out by the audience reaction.”
Source: Tom Skinner/nme.com
After The Beatles broke up, John Lennon wrote many songs that were not subtle with their politics. Some went too far in certain people’s eyes and were banned from playing on the radio. Not every political Lennon song received a ban, but here are three songs that were. “Cold Turkey” was released in 1969 and is one of the earliest songs from John Lennon’s solo career. Lennon wrote the track after he and his wife, Yoko Ono, went cold turkey after a brief heroin addiction. Many believed the song was promoting drugs, and it was subsequently banned on many American radios. In his 1980 interview with Playboy, Lennon said “Cold Turkey” never had the chance to become popular after it was banned.
“‘Cold Turkey’ is self-explanatory,” he said. “It was banned again all over the American radio, so it never got off the ground. They were thinking I was promoting heroin, but instead … They’re so stupid about drugs!”
Even with the ban, “Cold Turkey” was still a minor hit in the U.S., reaching No. 30 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. It also reached No. 14 on the U.K. Official Charts.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
In his prime, Phil Spector produced timeless tracks and numerous chart-topping pieces… so even if his later years wouldn’t be as bright, since he would spend his last days in prison convicted for murder, Spector was the ‘it guy’ if you were looking for a brilliant producer to help you dominate the charts in the late 60s.
So, it wasn’t long before none other than the Beatles contacted him for a collaboration, and Phil, we might guess, readily accepted the offer. Well, when it comes to British rockers’ history with producers, perhaps, there’s no need to say how lucky they had while working with producer George Martin, whose brilliance led people often call him ‘the fifth Beatle.’
There were even times when the band left Martin to his own devices, giving him their blessings to produce some of their beloved tracks the way he thought would be the best. So, it might be only fair to say that the Fab Four never had any significant problems or trust issues while working with their producers.
The productions of ‘Let It Be,’ however, differed from the rest of their celebrated discography since it had been quite challenging for the band to focus on their music with all the inner conflicts and complex personal relationships. The band was on the edge of falling apart, though they tried their best to keep things together and carry on.
Source: Melisa Karakas/rockcelebrities.net
Some might say the Beatles. Some might say Chuck Berry, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson, or Prince. The question of who is the most influential artist of all time is definitely no easy call, as there are many greats, and influence is admittedly an abstract word. However, all of them had their own qualities to contribute to their specific genres and influenced those that came after them. All served to overlap and feed into the music scene and one another.
For me, there’s truth in saying that a band of boys from Liverpool directly influenced most musical and artistic styles. The Beatles’ songwriting, composition, and sound influenced many after them. So it’s settled! The Beatles are the best, and we can move on… Only I must confess. Generally, yes, they seem to have the most significant influence, but they are hardly flawless. The Beatles were very influential in their bubble of time, and their sound still holds up thanks to the handy production work of George Martin and his son, as well as Phil Spector. But this is also a testament to their musical acumen. They are influential while being heavily influenced themselves.
Source: Taylor Green/theboar.org
