Beatles News
Bob Dylan and John Lennon were friends, but they were complete opposites in their approach to the media. Lennon was very revealing in interviews, particularly in the immediate aftermath of The Beatles’ breakup. He spoke candidly about his relationship with Yoko Ono and his distaste for other artists. Dylan, on the other hand, remained enigmatic. While he has given hundreds of interviews in his career, he is much less willing to open his private life to media scrutiny than Lennon was. In some ways, though, this has increased speculation about him.
A black and white picture of Bob Dylan holding a cigarette by a window. John Lennon wears a white turtleneck and glasses.
Dylan first met The Beatles in 1964 and quickly gravitated toward Lennon. The Beatles’ road manager Neil Aspinall believed that Dylan recognized Lennon as the leader of the band. Lennon also took a great deal of musical inspiration from Dylan and enjoyed his friendship.
“And John was a very good friend of Dylan’s,” director D.A. Pennebaker said, per the book The Ballad of Bob Dylan: A Portrait by Daniel Mark Epstein. “John just loved him. And vice versa. They adored each other. And the rest of the Beatles? Paul would come in and play something and Dylan would get up and walk out of the room.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney has written many love songs about the woman in his life, and several are about his first wife, Linda. The two were married for almost 30 years before her death in 1998. During their time together, McCartney expressed his love in various ways, including writing songs about her.
“The Lovely Linda” is the opening track on McCartney’s first solo album, McCartney. He wrote the song in the early days of their relationship, and it features sounds of the pair hanging around the house. In an interview with Billboard, McCartney called the song a “direct diary.”
“That was when Linda and I first got together,” he said. “The record is me playing around the house. You hear her walking through the living room doorway out to the garden, and the door squeaks at the end of the tape. That’s one of the songs from my personal experience, with ‘the flowers in her hair.’ She often used to wear flowers in her hair, so it’s a direct diary.”
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney loved writing songs with John Lennon. However, if he had to choose one of the most exciting things about their time as songwriter partners, Paul said they came at songs from different angles. They were opposites most of the time but complimented each other.
In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul wrote that no one was interested in his songs until he met John. In The Beatles’ early days, the songwriting pair wrote at least one song daily and only came close to a dry songwriting session once.
A dry songwriting session was rare for Paul and John because they knew how to work together. If one were stuck, the other would know how to help. “We could suggest the way out of the maze to each other, which was a very handy thing to have. We inspired each other,” Paul wrote.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
Many actors have a hard time watching their movies, and The Beatles were no different regarding their first movie, A Hard Day’s Night. While attending a screening of A Hard Day’s Night, every member failed to sit through the screening, except George Harrison. Harrison sat through the whole thing, which could be because he was the only one who could stand his acting.
The Beatles acted in movies such as A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, and Magical Mystery Tour. Each film was a musical comedy that featured excellent soundtracks promoting The Beatles’ music. None of the fab four were trained actors, so this was a new experience for them.
In the book George Harrison on George Harrison, Paul McCartney admitted they weren’t the best actors. Part of it was that they were lazy and would learn their lines shortly before shooting each scene. However, they did enjoy the experience of making their first movie.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
Did you know that legendary Beatle Paul McCartney's first wife was a professional photographer? And a brilliant one at that! Linda McCartney (1941-1998), born Linda Eastman, was the first-ever female photographer to shoot a cover image for Rolling Stone magazine - with an image of Eric Clapton. She was a renowned music photographer in her own right covering the early New York doo-wop scene.
The Linda McCartney Retrospective is an exhibition opening this week at the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography, and has been curated by Paul McCartney and their daughter Mary McCartney, who is now also a photographer and documentary filmmaker, to showcase Linda's entire career from 1965 to 1997.
Source: Beth Nicholls/digitalcameraworld.com
The Beatles and Pink Floyd were two of the world’s biggest bands in the 1960s and 1970s. And they hardly crossed paths while both bands were active, even though Floyd recorded their debut next door to The Beatles. Pink Floyd cut Paul McCartney’s contribution to their legendary 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon, but The Beatles’ music made a surprise and nearly-hidden cameo on the record.
The Dark Side of the Moon features several voice cameos. Pink Floyd asked various Abbey Road Studios employees and others to answer questions (some simple, some existential) and included their responses on the album.
But not Paul’s.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
The Beatles often wrote songs about their personal experiences in their music. This included writing about real locations, such as places that impacted their lives while growing up in Liverpool. Several settings they wrote about are places that Beatles fans can still visit.
Here are 3 Beatles songs written about real locations
“Penny Lane” was released in 1967 as a double-A side single with “Strawberry Fields Forever”. The track was primarily written by Paul McCartney and is about a street in Liverpool called Penny Lane. The song is McCartney’s recollection of the street from his upbringing. In a 2009 interview with Clash, McCartney reflected on “Penny Lane”, saying it was a place he and John Lennon knew well.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
While The Beatles didn’t split until 1970, George Harrison already had ideas for his triple album, All Things Must Pass. He knew he wanted to go forward with his solo career, and Paul McCartney said he had an “affectionate” description for the album that sounded crude but could be considered an accurate metaphor.
While John Lennon and Paul McCartney were the first to announce their departures from The Beatles, George Harrison was the first Beatle to embark on their solo career. He had released two albums before the band split up: Wonderwall Music and Electric Sound. All Thing Must Pass was his third studio album and was a triple album consisting of 23 songs, including unreleased tracks that he wrote when he was with The Beatles, such as “Wah-Wah.” The album includes “My Sweet Lord,” his single that hit No. 1 on the charts, making him the first Beatle to reach that accomplishment alone. The album reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for seven consecutive weeks.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison was given the nickname the “Quiet Beatle” because he was reportedly shy and was often in the background of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. However, his contributions often went underappreciated by fans, who were mainly focused on who sang or wrote each song. George Harrison didn’t receive the same attention as McCartney and Lennon, but his guitar skills made him irreplaceable. Harrison proved in his solo career that he could write fantastic songs, but his songwriting talents were neutered in The Beatles. He did write a few hits, such as “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun,” but primary songwriting duties were given to Lennon and McCartney. In an interview with Salon, Harrison’s ex-wife Pattie Boyd said the singer was often frustrated that he was taking a backseat to his other bandmates.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
In 1986, Harrison appeared on an Australian TV news show, where he was quizzed about the possibility of a reunion between the three stars (at this time, John Lennon had been murdered six years prior).
He explained: "It’s best left as it was. With all those nice memories and the records are there. You know, you don’t want to see three old men hobbling around the stage pretending to be the Fab Four."
The Quiet Beatle expressed the same opinion back in 1974 when he was asked about the thought of getting back together, just four years after the initial split.
And during this outburst, he placed the blame solely on The Beatles' fans: "I can understand that the Beatles did nice things and it’s appreciated that people still like them. The problem comes when they want to live in the past, when they want to hold on to something. People are afraid of change."
Source: Callum Crumlish/express.co.uk
