Beatles News
A popular nighttime DJ in Chicago first played the Beatles in February 1963, spinning a single version of "Please Please Me" that wasn't released through EMI, Parlophone or Capitol Records.
Instead, it was tiny Vee-Jay Records, a Black-owned label from Chicago's South Side founded by Vivian Carter and Jimmy Bracken. The Beatles were already surging in popularity back in their native England. Without Vee-Jay, however, they might never have broken in America. Capitol Records, EMI's American subsidiary, had initially turned them down.
Carter was also a radio personality and hosted a well-regarded gospel program in her Indiana hometown. She married Bracken, an entrepreneurial dreamer, four years before John Lennon and Paul McCartney first met in 1957. They started Vee-Jay, named after the first letters of their first names, with a $500 loan from a local pawnbroker. The first signed act was a doo-wop group, the Spaniels. Their debut single, "Baby It’s You," shot to No. 10 on the Billboard R&B chart, then the follow-up "Goodnite, Sweetheart, Goodnite" rose to No. 5. Vee-Jay was on its way.
They hired Ewart Abner as general manager. He'd later serve as label president at Vee-Jay before rising to the same position at Motown, Vee-Jay's successor as the most successful Black-operated record company. Previous experience at Chicago's Chance label had given Abner a wealth of insight into getting records made – and played.
Source: ultimateclassicrock.com
After The Beatles split up in 1970, George Harrison became perhaps the most successful member of the former band to build a solo career. In that same year, he released his third solo record, All Things Must Past, the album that would become his best-known and most successful. On November 23, 1970, Harrison dropped his first single from the record, My Sweet Lord, but four months later, he was hit was massive plagiarism charges.
By February 10, 1971, My Sweet Lord had become a smash hit, reaching the number one spot in singles charts around the world, and selling millions of copies in various countries. It was then claimed that My Sweet Lord was a rip-off of the 1963 song He's So Fine by American girlband The Chiffons.
Harrison admitted the songs were extremely similar in tone and structure, and - over the following ten years - battled to prove it was not an intentional display of plagiarism.
Source: Callum Crumlish/express.co.uk
Paul McCartney said all the “catchphrases” the press used to make up about The Beatles were “quite annoying.” First, the media gave the Fab Four tags that didn’t accurately describe their personalities. Then, they coined a term for their “distinct” sound.
In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul wrote that with the press, “you need them and they need you.” However, some of the more annoying things the press said about The Beatles unfortunately stuck.
For instance, the press called what The Beatles did “Mersey Beat,” which took its name from a local entertainment paper. Paul wrote that when The Beatles heard the “catchphrase,” they thought, “Well, bloody hell. That’s so corny.”
Paul added, “We never thought of ourselves as Mersey, we thought of ourselves as Liverpool, and its an important difference if you come from there. But ‘Mersey Beat’ and ‘Mop Tops’-all these catchphrases stuck and were quite annoying.
“You’d do something you wouldn’t even think about, but then it would be a huge story.”
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
Phil Spector said critics hated his work on The Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road.” He said it was fun to read critics say he “took all the guts out of” The Beatles. Spector gave fans insight into Paul McCartney’s role in recording the album Let It Be.
Phil Spector produced The Beatles‘ “The Long and Winding Road.” Subsequently, critics “destroyed” him for his contributions to the song. Critics took issue with one specific element of the ballad’s production.
The 2003 book Phil Spector: Out of His Head says The Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road” received negative reviews from critics. Reviewers disliked the string section Spector added to the track, claiming it made the song sound too sentimental.
“Critically, I was destroyed,” Spector recalled. “They just panned the s*** out of me. It was fun to see people getting into it … ‘how Spector ruined The Beatles’ and how I took all the guts out of them.”
Spector discussed how people should think about “The Long and Winding Road” in retrospect. “Now that it’s sold 3 million, and it’s all over and done with, they should listen to what was there beforehand, I mean really listen to it,” he said.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/
cheatsheet.com
Even Ringo Starr wasn’t spared in The Beatles’ bitter breakup. His drumming increasingly shone through in the music (he praised his work on “Get Back”) in the later years, but none of that mattered as the band dissolved. Paul McCartney threatened the drummer when he visited his house, and Ringo admitted he got very emotional about being attacked by his bandmate.
The Beatles were technically still together in 1970 when Paul’s debut solo album was set to hit shelves that April. The only trouble was it was scheduled to come out a week after the Fab Four’s Let It Be.
Ringo, John Lennon, and George Harrison didn’t think that was the wisest decision, so they wrote a letter pleading with Paul to change his release date. The drummer decided he should deliver it instead of a courier. Macca read the letter and erupted.
Paul threatened Ringo and threw the drummer out of his house. Things got so hostile that the meeting between longtime bandmates almost came to blows. Being verbally assaulted — Paul uttered an “I’ll finish you!” according to You Never Give Me Your Money author Peter Doggett — and nearly attacked made Ringo emotional.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
Producer George Martin called The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” a “typical John song.” Martin discussed the public reaction to the track. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was a huge hit in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Producer George Martin worked on The Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. He revealed what he thought of The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Subsequently, he hated when the song was used in a program about LSD.
The book The Beatles: Paperback Writer includes an excerpt from Martin’s 1979 book All You Need Is Ears. In the latter book, Martin discussed John Lennon’s songwriting.
“Compared with Paul’s songs, all of which seemed to keep in some sort of touch with reality, John’s had a psychedelic, almost mystical quality,” he said. “‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ was a typical John song in that respect, and a lot of analysts and psychiatrists were later to describe it as the drug song of all time. They were talking rubbish, but the tag stuck.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney claimed his bandmate George Harrison got The Rolling Stones a recording contract with the label that turned The Beatles down. That isn’t all the Fab Four did to kick-start their friends’ careers. Later, The Beatles gave The Rolling Stones a hit song.
In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul recalled a day in the summer of 1963, shortly after The Beatles moved to London, when he and John Lennon admired the guitars on display in shops on Charing Cross Road.
The Beatles were fairly new and they’d only been a part of the EMI family for about a year. They didn’t have any No. 1 hits in the U.S. yet, but they did have a No. 1 in the U.K., “Please Please Me.” Then came their second, “From Me To You” (their first No. 1 on the official U.K. chart).
As Paul and John looked through the shop windows, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards drove by. The Rolling Stones invited to drive them up town. In the car, Jagger told Paul and John that they’d finally landed a recording contract.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison became involved in Transcendental Meditation, Indian music, and even wrote a song about the Hindu god Krishna — “My Sweet Lord.” Here’s what this Beatle said about his connection with the country and its culture.
In 1967, George Harrison answered questions for the BBC Radio program Scene And Heard. There, he commented on his close connection with Indian culture and what drew him to this country, in particular.
“When I first noticed that I was interested with the music first of all…,” Harrison said (via Beatles Interviews), “and along with that I’d heard stories of people in caves. Yogis, as they’re known. People levitating and dematerializing. And doing all sorts of wondrous things.”
Source: Julia Dzurillay/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney and John Lennon helped make The Beatles what they were. They never got to the bottom of each other’s souls, as Macca once said, but they wrote many of the Fab Four’s biggest hits. But not all good things last. Their working relationship was so fractured that Paul said he was too embarrassed to ask John about singing together on “Come Together.”
John Lennon (left) and Paul McCartney announce The Beatles' Apple Corps. company at a press conference in New York in 1968.
Paul and John guided The Beatles to international stardom. Their songwriting talents gave the world hit songs and all-time great albums. But all good things come to an end.
As George Harrison came into his own as a songwriter, he felt stifled when his songs rarely made it on Fab Four albums. That was by design, as John wanted to limit George’s songwriting, according to Macca. That was just one chink in The Beatles’ armor.
As the 1960s closed, the band members had opposing artistic visions, desires to explore solo careers, and fought about money and who should manage the band. Paul found himself at odds with his bandmates on many levels, and he and John drifted apart as The Beatles disintegrated.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney has a history of making subtle references to drugs in his music. Many songs from his solo career and The Beatles contain lyrics that are euphemisms for marijuana or psychedelics. One song from McCartney’s Band on the Run album was about the enjoyment of “rolling a joint.”
The Beatles had a knack for sneaking drug references into their music. An example of this is “Got to Get You into My Life” from their 1966 album Revolver. Written by Paul McCartney, the song seems like any other love song, but he later revealed the song was an “ode to pot.”
In Barry Miles’ biography Many Years From Now, McCartney discussed how he had developed a hobby of smoking weed during his time with The Beatles. He found the drug to have “literally mind-expanding” effects and wanted to write a song about his enjoyment of pot.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
