Beatles News
Paul McCartney really likes a cover of The Beatles’ “Yesterday” by a famous singer. He discussed his feelings about the singer in general.
The original version of “Yesterday” became a massive hit in the United States.
Paul McCartney said he sometimes considers The Beatles‘ “Yesterday” his favorite song. He liked one version of the song better than the Fab Four’s. On the other hand, he was less impressed with an Elvis Presley performance of “Yesterday.”
In the 2015 book Conversations with Paul McCartney, Paul discussed his favorite song. “When I’m asked which is my favorite song, it’s always a difficult question,” he said. “I sometimes say ‘Yesterday’ because it’s been covered by so many people.
“But more often I say ‘Here, There and Everywhere,'” he added. “It makes it on a number of levels. If it were someone else’s song, it would be one of my favorites.” For context, “Yesterday” became a massive hit while “Here, There and Everywhere” is an album track from Revolver that never became a single.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
As one of only two remaining living members of The Beatles, Paul McCartney has a duty to the music community and the world to stay alive as long as possible.
For the most part, McCartney generally lives up to that duty.
The 80-year-old still tours and by all accounts is in fantastic shape for his age. McCartney even invited Foo Fighters founder and former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl on stage last year for his first live appearance since the tragic passing of Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins.
But sometimes life can sneak up on you. And that’s exactly what happened to an unsuspecting McCartney over the weekend.
Source: Clay Sauertieg/brobible.com
While Paul McCartney didn’t initially get along with John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, the two seem to have a better relationship today. The pair began to connect after Lennon’s assassination in 1980, and McCartney said that speaking with Ono about John helped him get through his grief. In a 1984 interview with Playboy, Paul McCartney reflected on his reaction to John Lennon’s death and his current relationship with Yoko Ono. McCartney admitted he “never really got on that well” with Yoko when she was with Lennon. The former Beatle says that John changed after meeting her, but he understood he was in love. Following his death, McCartney said he started to get to know her better and found that they have some things in common. “I only started to get to know her after John’s death. I began wanting to know if I could be of any help, because of my old friend. And at first, I was a bit put off by her attitude of ‘I don’t want to be widow of the year.’ That’s what she said. At first, I felt rebuffed and thought, Oh well, great! Well, sod you! But then I thought, Wait a minute, come on. She’s had the tragedy of a lifetime here, and I’m being crazy and insensitive to say, ‘Well, if you’re not going to be nice to me, I’m not going to be nice to you.’ I feel I started to get to know her then, to understand what she was going through instead of only my point of view all the time… which I think is part of growing up anyway. And I think then I was able to find quite a lot of things in common with Yoko.”
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
When The Beatles met Bob Dylan in 1964, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were some of the world’s biggest names. Still, they were excited to meet the American musician. After their first meet up, during which Dylan famously gave the band marijuana for the first time, Dylan reportedly began focusing on one Beatle in particular. He believed Lennon was the band leader, so he paid him the most attention.In 1964, Dylan met The Beatles at the Delmonico Hotel in New York City. Dylan offered them a joint, but before anyone could take it, Lennon ordered Starr to try it first. Starr seemed hesitant, but Lennon told him he had to be the band’s “royal taste tester.” After a moment, he agreed. According to journalist Al Aronowitz, this move “instantly revealed The Beatles’ pecking order” (via the book Ringo: With a Little Help by Michael Seth Starr).
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney said bandmate George Harrison and The Beatles‘ producer, George Martin, brought something interesting to his song, “And I Love Her.” They made it more “musical.”
During The Beatles’ early career, their manager, Brian Epstein, arranged for them to move to London, where the music business was, and live in an apartment in Mayfair. London was experiencing a massive redevelopment after World War II, and it was an exciting place to be. However, for Paul, that excitement didn’t extend to their living arrangements.
In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul wrote he moved in with then-girlfriend Jane Asher and her family in their posh Marylebone home because the apartment Epstein picked “had no soul,” unlike the home where he grew up.
Paul met Asher in the spring of 1963 when she interviewed The Beatles for the Radio Times at the Royal Albert Hall.
He wrote, “She and I started dating shortly afterwards, and towards the end of the year the Ashers must have heard me grumbling about Mayfair and said, ‘Well, do you want to stay here?’ This gesture was in the long tradition of giving a garret room to a starving artist. So, I had a little room up at the top, next to Jane’s brother Peter’s room.”
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
The Beatles revolutionized the way many bands recorded their music. Most of their recording sessions took place at Abbey Road Studios, where the group experimented with different sounds and styles to create many iconic songs. For one of their songs, The Beatles took a gamble as they recorded it in a room no bigger than a closet.
“Yer Blues” debuted in 1968 on The White Album. The song was The Beatles’ attempt at a classic blues track filled with soul and blaring guitar riffs. The tune was written by John Lennon during the group’s Spring 1968 trip to India. While the others went to find some sort of spiritual enlightenment, Lennon was going through a time of personal distress, and many of his honest emotions were expressed in the song.
“The funny thing about the camp was that although it was very beautiful and I was meditating about eight hours a day, I was writing the most miserable songs on earth,” Lennon said, per Yahoo! “In ‘Yer Blues,’ when I wrote, ‘I’m so lonely I want to die,’ I’m not kidding. That’s how I felt. Up there trying to reach God and feeling suicidal.”
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
It’s one of those questions to which everyone is (pretty) sure they know the answer. What was The Beatles' first No.1 on the official UK charts?
Just about everyone knows that “Love Me Do,” their first single, did OK on the charts, but didn’t reach the coveted top spot. So the answer has to be… “Please Please Me” recorded at the end of November 1962 and released as their second single on January 11, 1963. But the truth is, according to the Record Retailer magazine chart, “Please Please Me” only made No.2. What was the confusion about? Well, the good old BBC did place the song at No.1 on their chart, which was determined by an average of various UK charts published in the New Musical Express, Record Mirror, and other British pop papers.
Source: Richard Havers/news.yahoo.com
John Lennon is the father of Julian Lennon and Sean Taro Ono Lennon. Becoming a father, though, and “feeling like a real father” was a “slow process,” as the Beatles member wrote in a note to his first wife, Cynthia. Here’s what we learned from Cynthia Lennon’s memoir John.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono with their children from previous marriages Julian Lennon, 6, and daughter Kyoko, 5, pictured taking a walk during their Scottish Holiday | Daily Record/Daily Record/Mirrorpix via Getty Images
Amidst his stardom with the Beatles, John Lennon began a relationship with his college classmate Cynthia Lennon (then Cynthia Powell). After she became pregnant with her son Julian, the two got married.
Source: Julia Dzurillay/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney said John Lennon‘s last-minute addition to The Beatles‘ “All My Loving” made it magical. The songwriting partners added something special to each other’s songs every time.
In his book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul wrote about writing “All My Loving.” He said he wrote it while traveling on a tour bus and doesn’t think he wrote it about his girlfriend, Jane Asher.
Paul wrote, “So I was on a tour bus somewhere in the U.K., with nothing to do, and I started to think of these words: ‘Close your eyes . . ‘ Although we’d met at this point, I don’t know that I was thinking specifically of Jane Asher when I wrote this, though we were courting.
“It’s probably more of a reflection on what our lives were like then – leaving behind family and friends to go on tour and experience all these new adventures.
“It’s one of the few songs I’ve written where the words came first. That almost never happens, I usually have an instrument with me. So, I’d started work on the lyrics on the bus, and back then we were playing what was known as the Moss Empires circuit.”
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison‘s estate could have many more of his unreleased songs to give to fans. The spiritual Beatle gave clues to their existence many times, and his family has released some through remastered versions of his albums.
The former Beatle didn’t release that many solo albums. However, that doesn’t mean George wasn’t constantly recording and writing music. There must be tons of unreleased tracks because George never stopped making music.
In Harrison, George’s widow, Olivia, wrote, “George left the world his uniquely beautiful melodies, and some of them were barely born, played once, maybe.
“Every Dictaphone or tape machine in the house was found with a cassette inside bearing the beginning of a new song, some on piano, ukulele or guitar, some with hysterically funny words, some with fiercely serious lyrics, but all crafted from creativity he knew to be a divine gift.”
George would also constantly scribble lyrics down on bits of paper that he’d squirrel away. Olivia, who often helped her husband in the songwriting process, told Billboard that George would be “walking around and take a piece of paper out of his pocket and it would end up somewhere. Maybe he would stick it in a book or in a drawer or somewhere.”
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
