Beatles News
George Harrison said people wouldn’t want to see “three old men hobbling around the stage pretending to be the Fab Four.” He was sick of people asking him if The Beatles would ever reunite.
The spiritual Beatle always appreciated the fans, but he didn’t understand why some of them never let go of The Beatles. He had a problem with the people who wanted the band to continue or reunite. During a 1974 press conference (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters), George said he realized The Beatles filled a space in the 1960s and that the group meant a lot to people.
However, he also knew that some people were too attached. “I can understand that the Beatles did nice things and it’s appreciated that people still like them,” George said. “The problem comes when they want to live in the past, when they want to hold on to something. People are afraid of change.”
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison steered clear of approaching other famous people. He knew what it felt like when people confronted him. If George craved invisibity he rationalized that other celebrities did too.
After experiencing Beatlemania for about 10 years, George’s nerves were shot. He said he and the band came out of the 1960s “shell-shocked. They were lucky to have their sanity and humor intact.
For much of the 1960s and 1970s, George and The Beatles couldn’t go anywhere without being mobbed by people. “A good romp? That was fair in the films,” he wrote in his 1980 memoir, I Me Mine, “but in the real world . . . we didn’t have any space . . . like monkeys in a zoo.”
Eventually, George didn’t know whether his life was a blessing or a curse. During a 1975 interview with Dave Herman at WNEW-FM (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters), George said the blessing is that you’re rich and famous and “all this looks rosy.” On the other hand, the curse is that you’re never left alone and have to deal with people’s expectations.
George never escaped the watchful eye of the public and the hounding press. They analyzed and scrutinized his every move. George often wished he was invisible.
Source: Hannah Wigandt /cheatsheet.com
George Martin hated The Beatles’ “One After 909” and early John Lennon-Paul McCartney songs. He discussed why he had a positive view of the band in their early days anyways. The Beatles rediscovered “One After 909” sometime after and put the song on a classic album.
Producer George Martin hated The Beatles‘ “One After 909.” John Lennon revealed he wrote it when he was a teenager. Subsequently, The Beatles rediscovered the song when they were putting Let It Be together.
During a 2004 interview with Analog Planet, Martin discussed meeting The Beatles. “When I first met them in ’62, their material was terrible,” he said.
“Their songs were … I mean, ‘One after 909?'” he said. “What the hell was that? It was silly stuff. Not very good, really. But they had this potential, and they had this charisma.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison was the youngest Beatles member, performing with Paul McCartney and John Lennon at only 14 years old. During a self-interview, this guitarist commented on his role in the rock band — and why his age didn’t make “the slightest difference.”
The Beatles are the behind “Love Me Do,” “Here Comes the Sun,” and “Strawberry Fields Forever.” They first started writing and performing music as teenagers, with guitarist and songwriter Harrison as the youngest band member.
Harrison was only 14 years old when he started performing with the then-Quarrymen. According to Biography, it was McCartney that pushed for Harrison to join the band, despite the guitarist’s age. Eventually, the band changed their name to the Beatles, swapping their drummer for Ringo Starr. The rest is history.
Source: Julia Dzurillay/cheatsheet.com
Since the explosion of Beatlemania in 1964, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr began to have a difficult time going out in public. Everywhere they went, people approached them, demanding pictures, autographs, or just a chance at a conversation. While exciting at first, this level of attention quickly grew tiresome. The band began using disguises to go out in public, to varying degrees of success. According to Lennon, McCartney was always the best at disguises, even managing to fool the band’s manager.
After The Beatles found widespread popularity, the band could hardly go anywhere in public without fans approaching them. People would even turn up at their homes and parents’ homes, searching for them. Lennon’s first wife, Cynthia, recalled watching the band fight through the crowd to get to their car.
“Watching TV in Liverpool and looking at the photos in the papers of the crowd scenes I was a little alarmed — John and the others had almost been crushed by the mob as they tried to get to their car that night,” she wrote in her memoir, John. “What on earth was going on?”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
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
