Beatles News
The Beatles were heavily influenced by Bob Dylan, especially John Lennon. Lennon gravitated toward Dylan’s more introspective songwriting style and brought that into his music. While many of Lennon’s songs for The Beatles were inspired by Bob Dylan, the “Blowin’ in the Wind” singer thought he went too far with one song.
“Norwegian Wood” is from The Beatles’ 1965 album Rubber Soul. The song was written by John Lennon and was a veiled admission to an affair he was involved in. It was also the first song that featured George Harrison playing the sitar. The song is influenced by Dylan’s songwriting, with Lennon delivering more reflective and personal lyrics.
While Lennon channeled Bob Dylan for many Beatles tracks, Dylan was particularly enraged by “Norwegian Wood”. According to author David Dalton’s book Who Is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan, Dylan grew frustrated with other artists copying him. Sonny & Cher admitted their hit “I Got You Babe” was influenced by him, and “Norwegian Wood” pushed him over the edge.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
On March 2, 1964, nearly 60 years ago today, The Beatles began filming A Hard Day’s Night. This was The Beatles’ first film, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. The band, having enjoyed success in the United Kingdom throughout 1963, were now international stars. On this day, George Harrison also met his future wife, Pattie Boyd.
When The Beatles traveled to America in early 1964, Beatlemania followed them across the Atlantic. They were at the height of their fame, and those around them decided to capitalize on that by putting the band in a movie. They wanted to do something different than typical music movies, too.
“We’d made it clear to Brian [Epstein] that we weren’t interested in being in one of those typical nobody-understands-our-music plots where the local dignitaries are trying to ban something as terrible as the Saturday night hop,” John Lennon said, per Pop Matters. “The kind of thing where we’d just pop up a couple of times between the action. Never mind all our pals, how could we face each other if we had allowed ourselves to be involved in that kind of movie?”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
No artist did more to legitimize rock music as a serious art form than the Beatles — and perhaps no accolade symbolized that shift more than the band's magnum opus, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the first rock LP to win Album of the Year at the 10th Annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 29, 1968.
The Fab Four had shown a staggering amount of growth since winning their first two Grammys — Best New Artist and Best Performance by a Vocal Group for "A Hard Day's Night" — in 1965. The Rubber Soul track "Michelle" earned them another trophy for Song of the Year in 1967. Still, the most coveted prize of the ceremony had eluded them so far, with Help! and Revolver losing back-to-back years to Frank Sinatra's September of My Years and A Man and His Music, respectively.
Source: Doug Podell/1067wllz.iheart.com
The Beatles worked together to make some of the most enduring music of the twentieth century, but they didn’t do that without some fights along the way. The band met as young teenagers and spent most of their time together; arguments were bound to happen. There is, of course, the long-running feud between Paul McCartney and John Lennon and the court case after the band broke up. Some of their lesser-known fights were just as explosive, though. Somewhat surprisingly, George Harrison was at the center of many of them.Before The Beatles were famous, they played in German nightclubs and had five members. Their one-time guitarist Stuart Sutcliffe was often the butt of the band’s jokes, and he frequently clashed with McCartney. During a concert, something McCartney said about Sutcliffe’s girlfriend led to a fistfight.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Ringo Starr could always rely on a little help from his friends. The drummer’s 1973 solo album was the only post-Beatles record to feature every member of the Fab Four (albeit on different songs). Yet Ringo got stood up by Bob Dylan as the ex-Beatle worked on a solo album in 1987. Similar to the time Paul McCartney threatened him and made Ringo emotional, Dylan wasn’t very kind to one of his friends.
The story of The Beatles conquering the United States is practically rock history 101 at this point. After winning over English fans with their earliest singles, the Fab Four won over millions of U.S. fans with their Feb. 9, 1964, appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
The band met Dylan when they toured the U.S. more extensively later that year. That was also the first time The Beatles got high, and Ringo was the first to smoke Dylan’s stash.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
Each of The Beatles was married at least twice, and their ex-wives remained a part of their lives over the years. After their divorces, though, each of these women went on to build a life outside of their famous ex-husbands. Here’s what Cynthia Lennon, Maureen Starkey, Pattie Boyd, and Heather Mills did after their divorces, and where they are now.
John Lennon was the first of The Beatles to get married when he wed Cynthia Powell, his classmate at the Liverpool College of Art. She met Lennon in the late 1950s, when they were both enrolled in the school, and they began a relationship. They married in 1962, after Cynthia discovered she was pregnant.
In 1968, the couple divorced after Cynthia learned about Lennon’s affairs, including one with Yoko Ono. Their split was acrimonious; he accused her of cheating on him and they fought over the settlement and custody of their son, Julian.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Toward the end of The Beatles, George Harrison grew more frustrated with his creative restrictions. His music often took a backseat to John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s, and he believed McCartney had too much control. Paul’s stubbornness appeared during the “Hey Jude” recording session, further frustrating George Harrison. The Beatles ended in 1970 as each member went in different ways musically. George Harrison might have been the most relieved to no longer be in the band as he had felt restricted in The Beatles. He wanted to bring unique sounds to the band but was often stifled by McCartney. In a 1979 interview with Rolling Stone, Harrison called McCartney “pushy” and said it wouldn’t be a good idea for them to be in another band together.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney finally got Stevie Wonder to the recording studio to make “Ebony and Ivory” on Feb. 27, 1982. The former Beatle waited a long time for the “Superstition” singer to show up after they made plans to record the song.
In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul said he wrote “Ebony and Ivory” in 1980 “as a response to the problem of racial tension, which had been the cause of a lot of friction in the U.K. around that time.”
He made the demo in his Scottish recording studio and asked Wonder if he wanted to help him record it. They were old friends, first meeting in 1966 after a 15-year-old Wonder played a show in London.
Paul and Wonder agreed to meet at Monserrat, where producer George Martin had a recording studio. However, Paul didn’t yet know that Wonder operated on his own time.
Wonder was “supposed to show up but he didn’t. So there was a lot of phoning, which is the way it is with Stevie. ‘We’re here. When are you coming out?’ It was always ‘this Friday.’
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
An exhibition of Linda McCartney’s 30-year photography career just opened in Tucson, Arizona. The Linda McCartney Retrospective, co-curated by Paul and Mary McCartney and the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, has been traveling the globe since 2013, but this is its first stop in North America.
As part of the exhibit, CCP students got to ask Sir Paul some questions about Linda’s work, including what parts of her photography most excited her.
McCartney notes that she was “excited about all her photography, because it was her life,” sharing that when she started out her photography was focused on the music scene, but then shifted to “family life with the kids, horses, countryside and landscapes.”
He notes, “Whatever situation she was in she would use it for her art, and her craft naturally developed that way.”
Source: kslx.com
Tony Parkin said when the Beatles played York's Rialto they "came on with such energy it just blew you away"
Music fans in York have been reminiscing about The Beatles playing the city for the first time on the 60th anniversary of the gig.
The band first performed in York on 27 February 1963, at the Rialto theatre.
John, Paul, George and Ringo were on tour with Helen Shapiro, who missed the York show through sickness.
Graham Metcalf , who was there on the night, said though the Fab Four were only fifth on the bill, when they came on stage the venue "went wild".
The Beatles played York four times that year, along with gigs at Harrogate's Royal Hall and Scarborough's Futurist Theatre.
Source:BBC News
