Beatles News
After The Beatles broke up, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr set off on separate careers. While they would work together sporadically over the years, they were now solo artists. This was uncharted territory for them, but they all found success. Starr said that his former bandmates were shocked when his music hit number one.
By the end of the 1960s, tensions within The Beatles were at an all-time high. After disagreements over the band’s creative direction and management, they decided to call it quits. Lennon said it was good that they were moving on.
“It’s far better music (we’re all making now) because we’re not suppressed,” he said in 1971, per Express. “In the Beatles, by the time the Beatles were at their peak we were cutting each other down to size. We were limiting our capacity to write and perform by fitting it into some kind of format and that’s why it caused trouble … I knew I wouldn’t be doing the same thing. It just doesn’t work like that. It’s like a rugby team. Sometimes you just have to get married and leave the boys on a Saturday night. That’s just how it is.”
After the band’s breakup, each former member dug into their solo career. Harrison became the first of the group to have a No. 1 hit with 1970’s “My Sweet Lord.” Soon, though, the other Beatles found similar success.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
John Lennon was often known for his surreal and psychedelic sayings. Some of them wouldn’t make any sense, while others were humorous quotes that made the other Beatles laugh. In the early days of The Beatles, Lennon shared a bizarre anecdote about the band’s origins that Paul McCartney later used as the basis for one of his solo albums.
McCartney released his 10th solo album Flaming Pie in 1997. The project debuted shortly after The Beatles Anthology, an extensive retrospective of The Beatles that included a book, a documentary, and a three-volume set of double albums. McCartney worked on the project with Ringo Starr and George Harrison and was inspired to create an album with a Beatles influence.
For Flaming Pie, McCartney worked with Electric Light Orchestra’s Jeff Lynne and former Beatles producer George Martin. He also brought in family and friends to help record songs, including Starr on drums and his son, James, on guitar. The album was a critical and commercial success, peaking at No. 2 on the U.K. album charts and the U.S. Billboard 200.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles music career will be the focus of an upcoming documentary directed by Morgan Neville.
The tentatively titled Man on the Run, “the definitive document of Paul’s emergence from the dissolution of the world’s biggest band and his triumphant creation of a second decade of musical milestones — a brilliant and prolific stretch,” was announced at a pre-Grammy Universal Music Group party Saturday night; UMG’s television arm Polygram Entertainment will also produce the documentary, a teaser for which was shown at the event.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the film was given access to never-before-seen material from McCartney’s own archives, as well as features new interviews with the legendary singer and his collaborators.
Source: Daniel Kreps/rollingstone.com
Though Ringo Starr has the reputation as “the Funny Beatle” and is frequently photographed flashing a peace sign, he has admitted that he gets angry just like everyone else. He said that he was furious for years after The Beatles broke up. He also admitted that he didn’t like answering questions about The Beatles in interviews. Sometimes, he could get prickly even anticipating that line of questioning. A talk show host said Starr was her least favorite guest because of how angry he was.
“I was mad,” he said, per the New York Daily News. “For 20 years. I had breaks in between of not being.”
He began drinking to cope, blurring the edges of many of his experiences after the band broke up.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
When a 19-year-old Pattie Boyd arrived at Paddington Station in 1964, she had no idea she would become the object of two of the world's biggest rockstar's affections and change the face of Rock 'n' Roll itself.
Boyd had been working numerous modelling jobs a day when her agency called her to Paddington Station for a secret gig. At this point of her career, the young model had only worked on a handful of coveted roles including the opportunity to say a few lines in a Smiths Crisps television commercial directed by Richard Lester.
Boyd didn't expect much from this top-secret opportunity, she assumed it would be another casting call or maybe even the filming for an ad. However, she began to grow suspicious when she ran into Richard Lester and he refused to tell her what she was there for.
Source: Georgia Weir/honey.nine.com.au
George Harrison loved talking to people and revealed that it took a long time for anyone to bore him. The former Beatle enjoyed hearing people’s stories and perspectives, especially if they had interesting opinions about religion.
George Harrison talking to director David Puttnam in 1986.
In a November 1964 issue of The Beatles Book Monthly (per Beatles Interviews), George interviewed himself. He asked the questions he thought reporters missed, including if he made friends easily.
George replied that he was “extremely” interested in people. “I think I make an easy target for folk who like to talk about themselves,” he added. “It takes a long time for them to bore me because I enjoy listening to new ideas and different opinions. That’s what life is for– to find out fresh things and learn new facts.”
George asked himself if his life as a Beatle had put a stop to that. He replied no because he hates rushing. The pace of things was one drawback to being a Beatle for him. However, The Beatles knew each other inside and out. George said their individual characteristics balanced against one another well. “It is because our personalities work at different pressures that we get on so well together as a team,” he said.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
According to George Harrison, American fans sometimes “bother[ed]” the Beatles while at restaurants. Still, this band made time to dine out, as noted in one interview with Playboy Magazine.
The Beatles’ music (and fans) followed them — even at dinner. In All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the songwriter mentioned hearing Beatles songs while in public.
“I go to restaurants and the groups always play ‘Yesterday,’” Lennon said. “Yoko and I even signed a guy’s violin in Spain after he played us ‘Yesterday.’ He couldn’t understand that I didn’t write the song. But I guess he couldn’t have gone from table to table playing ‘I Am the Walrus.’”
During a 1965 interview with Playboy, the Beatles were asked if they could “safely” enjoy meals at restaurants. Ringo Starr replied by saying he went out to eat “the other night,” with McCartney chiming in with, “we’re known in the restaurants we go in.”
“Usually it’s only Americans that’ll bother you,” Harrison said (via Beatles Interviews). “If we go into a restaurant in London, there’s always going to be a couple of them eating there; you just tell the waiter to hold them off if they try to come over. If they come over anyway you just sign.”
Source: Julia Dzurillay/cheatsheet.com
In the year 1966, “it seemed to Western youth that The Beatles knew — that they had the key to current events and were somehow orchestrating them through their records.” So writes Ian McDonald in the critical study Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties. But some had been looking to John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr as pop-culture oracles since they put out their first album in 1963. Unlike the youth-oriented stars who came before, they fully inhabited the roles of both performers and creators. If anyone knew how to read the zeitgeist of that decade, surely it was the Beatles.
Source: openculture.com
By the time The Beatles were at the height of their fame, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were making more money than they could spend. Despite this, they never carried money with them. There was always an aide or assistant available to pay, so they didn’t bother. On a night out in Wales, though, nobody had enough money to pay for dinner. Luckily Harrison remembered that he had stored cash in an unusual place.In 1967, The Beatles traveled to Bangor, Wales, to attend a seminar on Transcendental Meditation. They took a train from London to Bangor with their wives and Mick Jagger. The band had first met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi after a seminar in London, and they were eager to follow him to Maine. Per The Guardian, Starr said that meeting him was “one of those mind-altering moments of your life.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Ringo Starr’s Beatles bandmates often overshadowed the drummer. The timekeeper born as Richard Starkey shined on several occasions, but John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison took the spotlight much of the time. Ringo got it wrong when he said young drummers would never get anywhere listening to his playing. But he always got it right with his Fab Four beats. Ringo also got it right when he praised his drumming on The Beatles’ song “Get Back” while giving John Lennon’s guitar playing a backhanded compliment.
The Beatles were barely holding it together when they convened for the Get Back sessions, songs that surfaced as their final album, Let It Be.
Paul pushed (and pushed and pushed) for a cohesive return to the band’s roots. George, fed up with never having an opportunity to rise above third wheel, got in a fight with John, temporarily quit the band, and went into a shell at home.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
