Beatles News
Ringo Starr and The Beatles had women (not just teenage girls) swooning when they hit it big. The drummer seemingly lost the chance at one relationship in 1964 because he was intellectually dumb. Yet the drummer might not have minded. Ringo found love years earlier and spoke the sweetest words of the woman who became his first wife.
John Lennon got married soon after Ringo joined The Beatles. The drummer started a committed relationship with Maureen (Mo) Cox around the same time. Yet John had to hide his marriage and Ringo his relationship from the public; the predominating wisdom of the day said pop stars should be single to appeal to more female fans.
Female Beatles fans threatened (and in one case assaulted) Cox when she and Ringo started dating. Even as he spent nights at clubs and faced throngs of American fans after the Fab Four’s appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, the drummer remained committed to her.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
When Paul Simon visited George Harrison at his estate in England, he asked him about boulders on the property. Harrison told Simon that the boulders had been there when he moved in. He told his former bandmate, Ringo Starr, a different story, though. Harrison made up a story to make Starr think Paul McCartney left him out of a promotional campaign.
Simon and Harrison became friends in 1976, after they performed on Saturday Night Live together. Simon visited Harrison’s home, Friar Park, for the first time in 2000.
“I hadn’t seen George for several years and was anxious to know, in person, how he was faring after the harrowing attack he’d endured just ten months earlier, on New Year’s Eve 1999,” Simon wrote for a special edition of Rolling Stone, “Remembering George.” “‘I’m really happy to see you,’ he said as we shook hands and embraced, ‘and these days, when I say I’m really happy to see someone, I mean I’m really happy.'”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison claimed he didn’t understand how so many different nationalities around the world knew and liked The Beatles. Every time he and his band traveled to a new place, George thought no one would know who they were. He was deeply mistaken
Throughout most of his life, George made contradictory statements about The Beatles. On the one hand, he thought they were innovative and a cultural phenomenon. At the same time, he didn’t think their music was that good. He sometimes even called his own songs average. To him, it was questionable if any of The Beatles’ songs would’ve been hits if any other band had recorded them.
If George believed The Beatles were only OK, despite their cultural impact, he would never understand why fans harped on about them and wanted them to continue.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
Tonight Rod Stewart will hit BBC 2 at 8pm in a feature that will show off some of the star's biggest performances from throughout the years. While he has some legendary songs under his belt - such as Maggie May, Sailing and Do Ya Think I'm Sexy? to name a few - he was caught in controversy in 1980 by The Beatles star John Lennon. The Fab Four singer claimed Stewart had "used" some of the band's last-ever recorded songs.
Lennon said Stewart's song The Killing of Georgie employed the same melody as The Beatles hit Don't Let Me Down. The star told journalist David Sheff in 1980: "By the way, Rod Stewart turned that [Don't Let Me Down] into ‘[Georgie] don’t go-o-o.’ That’s one the publishers never noticed."
He jokingly asked: "Why didn’t he just sing Don’t Let Me Down? The same reason I don’t sing other people’s stuff: because you don’t get paid."
Source: Callum Crumlish/express.co.uk
Mary McCartney directing a documentary about Abbey Road Studios meant one thing was almost guaranteed: access to her dad. As a member of the most famous of all the famous bands to record there, Paul McCartney has some incredible memories to share in If These Walls Could Sing, now released on Disney+ (opens in new tab), with additional input from musicians including Elton John, Baba Ani, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, Noel Gallagher, Nile Rodgers and Kate Bush.
"The lunatics started to take over the asylum," says of the Beatles using the studio as a creative HQ in the late sixties as they evolved from a live band into studio artists. What Beatles producer George Martin's son Giles calls "painting pictures with sound".
"We'd sometimes have one mix going on up in the control room, number two, then we'd have another one going on in number three, so you had the run of the building," continues McCartney.
Source: Rob Laing/musicradar.com
After The Beatles broke up, Ringo Starr and John Lennon maintained a friendly relationship despite the discontent roiling between the four former band members. Lennon and Starr worked together on music after the split, and Lennon wrote songs for his former bandmate. He also offered advice to Starr regarding the direction of his career. In a letter, Lennon told Starr he should record music that sounded more like Blondie.
After The Beatles broke up, Lennon was furious with George Harrison and Paul McCartney for the way they treated Yoko Ono. Starr had been much friendlier to her, though, so their friendship didn’t take as big of a hit. Though Lennon had a reputation for being mercurial, Starr saw a different side to his former bandmate. He recalled seeing Lennon shortly before his death.
“He and Yoko came over to our hotel, and we had a great time saying ‘hello’ again,” Starr said, per the book Ringo: With a Little Help by Michael Seth Starr. “His head was together. His album was done, and we worked it all out that come January, we were going into the studio together. Even though he was always treated in the press as a cynical put-down artist, John had the biggest heart of all of us. He was so up, so happy then — he blew me away, he was so happy.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
While John Lennon and Paul McCartney were the primary songwriters for The Beatles, George Harrison and Ringo Starr still contributed in many ways. Harrison wrote many hit songs, and while Starr wasn’t much of a songwriter then, McCartney says the drummer was a crucial member of The Beatles and even came up with a few song titles. In a 1984 interview with Playboy, Paul McCartney discussed how Ringo Starr contributed to The Beatles more than people thought. While he appeared just to be the band’s drummer, McCartney says there was a certain cleverness Starr possessed that the public never truly saw. “On the surface, Ringo was just some drummer,” he said. “But there was a hell of a lot more to him than that. For instance, there wouldn’t have been ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ without him. He had this kind of thing where he moved phrases around. My daughters have it, too. They just make up better phrases. Some of my kids have got some brains. ‘First of a ball,’ the girls say, instead of ‘First of all.’ I like that, because lyricists play with words.”
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
Ringo Starr was already an accomplished and sought-after drummer when The Beatles asked him to join. That didn’t make it easy. He compared it to going to school — he was the new kid and everyone else was already friends. Ringo once shared a brutally honest take about his place in the band, but he found a positive to being the fourth Beatle early in his tenure.
Ringo’s steady rhythm and ability to craft the perfect beat for each song helped propel The Beatles to the top of the charts. He found fame and fortune with the Fab Four, but that didn’t mean his life was a breeze.
The drummer was once brutally honest about his place in The Beatles. He understood he was the least talented songwriter. He played what the others told him to, and then felt bad when other drummers praised that work. Ringo was sometimes the whipping boy when frustrations between the other three boiled over.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison kept an eye on John Lennon‘s son, Julian Lennon, especially once the younger musician entered his music career in the 1980s. As the son of his late best friend, how could he not? On his debut album, one of the things that amazed listeners about Julian was how much he sounded like John.
However, according to George, the similarities between the father and son ended with their looks and sound.
During an interview on Good Morning Australia, George spoke about Julian. He said the younger singer might have long hair and glasses like John, but the father and son were nothing alike. Julian took after his mother, John’s first wife, Cynthia Lennon.
“Julian happens to be very talented, he’s really good,” George said. “He’s got a lot of good tunes; he’s only just started to try and do lyrics, but apart from him physically looking like John a bit, with his glasses and long hair, he really isn’t anything like John. He’s more like his mother.”
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
Despite often having critical views of The Beatles‘ music, George Harrison did like some of his band’s songs, including “Polythene Pam.” He said it reminded him of his home, Liverpool, and the risqué songs people used to sing there. It wasn’t a bad rock ‘n’ roll tune either.
For decades after The Beatles’ split, and even occasionally during their lifetime, George often revealed his contradicting views of his band. On the one hand, he thought what they did culturally was astounding and sometimes didn’t believe what a significant phenomenon they were. Meanwhile, George couldn’t help but question whether what The Beatles accomplished was all that good.
However, George revealed he thought some songs were good, including “Polythene Pam.”
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
