Beatles News
Paul McCartney’s Band on the Run didn’t inspire much thought from the singer after it was done. Someone gave him advice that was supposed to make the album more successful. Band on the Run and two of its singles were big hits in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Paul McCartney‘s Band on the Run is one of the most famous albums of the 1970s. A record executive told Paul to do two things to make the album a hit. Subsequently, Paul listened to him.
The 2015 book Conversations With Paul McCartney includes information about Band on the Run. “It’s always good to have an independent pair of ears listening to your music,” Paul said. “They can tell you what you’ve done, whereas you don’t always see it. So that was the case.
“We’d done Band on the Run and I said, ‘Well there it is, I’ve made an album, you put it out, thank you, end of story.’ But [record executive] Al [Coury] rang and said, ‘Hey Paul, I can really make this a more successful album, if you want.'”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison didn’t want to imagine a world without his friend and bandmate Bob Dylan. It would be one of his nightmares. The former Beatle greatly loved the “Like a Rolling Stone” singer.
In Here Comes The Sun: The Spiritual And Musical Journey Of George Harrison, Joshua M. Greene wrote that as a teenager, George first saw Dylan in Liverpool on a Granada television program about New York’s beat poets.
“While appearing in Paris in 1964, the Beatles picked up two of Bob Dylan’s albums at a radio station and were so mesmerized by his wise lyrics and simple chords that they played the albums constantly in their Hôtel George V suite,” Greene wrote.
The admiration was mutual. It was clear to Dylan that The Beatles were “doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous and their harmonies made it all valid, but I kept it to myself that I really dug them,” he told biographer Anthony Scaduto.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison said he wasn’t bitter about his first wife, Pattie Boyd, leaving him for his friend, Eric Clapton, when he covered The Everly Brothers’ “Bye Bye, Love.” The new couple even helped George record the song.
Since the day they met on the set of The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night in 1964 and fell in love with each other at first sight, George and Boyd were inseparable. Later, they embarked on a spiritual journey together.
However, George became more spiritual than Boyd. The pair said their vows in 1966, but George started leaving Boyd behind, dedicating most of his free time to learning more about God-consciousness.
Boyd felt left out and abandoned. However, Boyd loved her husband, although she claims he started being unfaithful. Meanwhile, George and Clapton started hanging out. It didn’t take long for Clapton to fall in love with Boyd.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison believed the 1970s destroyed most of the innovative people of the 1960s. He’d come out of the 1960s “shell-shocked” from his time with The Beatles. However, he recognized that the decade brought a cultural revolution and many great things. Then, there was nothing left in the 1970s.
Being a Beatle wasn’t always easy. Once Beatlemania started, the Fab Four had a hard time getting to places without being mobbed by hoards of fans. Touring was exhausting. George and The Beatles experienced unimaginable things over a short amount of time.
During an interview with Creem Magazine, George said the years that followed The Beatles were challenging because they were all “shell-shocked” from the 1960s.
In 1979, George told Rolling Stone, “The Beatles fortunately did that hit-and-run. But every year we were Beatling was like twenty years; so although it might only have been five or six years it seemed like eternity. That was enough for me, I don’t have any desire to do all that.
“It might have been fun for everybody else, but we never saw the Beatles… We were just four relatively sane people in the middle of madness. People used us as an excuse to trip out, and we were the victims of that.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
The daughter of pop megastar Paul McCartney has given an intimate peek into the hallowed halls of Abbey Road, the studio where he -- and many other music stars -- recorded masterpieces.
Mary McCartney directed the new documentary, "If These Walls Could Sing", which gets a worldwide release on Disney+ on January 6 after premiering in North America in December.
The London studio gave its name to arguably The Beatles' most beloved record, 1969's "Abbey Road", and it was on the nearby zebra crossing that the Fab Four shot their legendary cover photo.
"I have a personal connection with the studio," Mary McCartney told AFP.
"I grew up coming here, we lived nearby. I have a very funny picture that I love -- my mum (Linda McCartney) leading a pony across the zebra crossing."
Inevitably, The Beatles occupy a major part of the 90-minute documentary, since they recorded no less than 190 of their 210 songs there.
Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com
The Beatles often incorporated other genres of music into their work, including the blues and folk music. Songs like “Yer Blues” show the band’s interest in experimenting with different sounds to create a versatile catalog. Paul McCartney said that one Beatles song was inspired by Motown and a Motown bass player who he had tremendous respect for.
Motown is a record label that was founded in 1958 by Berry Gordy, Jr. in Detroit. The label found tremendous success in the 1960s through primarily African American artists who produced soul and blues music with mainstream appeal. Many of the artists who propelled Motown in the 1960s included Diana Ross & The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight, and Stevie Wonder.
While The Beatles dominated the U.K. before becoming popular in the U.S., Motown was topping the charts in the U.S. Since its inception, Motown has incorporated many genres, including rock, hip-hop/rap, R&B, and country. The label was absorbed into Universal Music Group in 1998 and was relaunched in 2011.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
The Beatles’ career was full of major milestones so for any of the Fab Four to name one as the biggest must be monumental. That’s exactly what Beatles drummer Ringo Starr did, though. Starr continues to have a solo career decades after The Beatles disbanded, but this Beatles moment remains on top.Starr was a guest on the Broken Record with Rick Rubin podcast on Sept. 21, 2021 to promote his pandemic EP Zoom In. The drummer pinpointed the biggest moment in his life. The British Invasion kicked off proper when The Beatles played The Ed Sullivan Show in February of 1964. Beatlemania was already kicking off in Europe with their first album, but New York took The Beatles to the next level. “When we landed in New York, there was no bigger moment in my life than that,” Starr said on Broken Record. “We’re actually in America, all the music we love is from America and America is big. Talk about coincidences, we got off the plane from Sweden at Heathrow. Ed Sullivan got off a plane from New York, didn’t know anything about us. We didn’t know him either and he sort of booked us.”
Source: Fred Topel/cheatsheet.com
The night before his father died, George Harrison dreamt of him coming to say goodbye. The bus driver wasn’t too pleased when his son left school to join a band. However, George made Harold very proud.
George developed a love for music at a young age. When George was 10, his mother, Louise, allowed him to buy a beginner’s guitar from a boy at school for 3 pounds, 10 shillings. Harold arranged his son’s first lessons.
George practiced until his fingers bled and the cheap guitar’s neck bent. Louise often stayed up all night with her frustrated son as he practiced. She reassured him that he’d get better with time.
Over the years, George became a great guitar player and started putting it before school. Eventually, he dropped out of school altogether and decided to pursue music full-time. His father was not pleased.
Harold was a very hard worker. He scheduled every bus in Liverpool, which involved 6,000 buses and 80 different routes. Harold wanted his children to become equally great workers and productive community members. However, when he realized that all his youngest son cared about was music, he got concerned.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
More than 60 years since they released their debut single, The Beatles now have their very own academic journal.
'The Journal of Beatles Studies', published by Liverpool University Press, is the first journal to establish The Beatles as an object of scholarly research.
Articles in the first issue include 'Beatlemania: On informational cascades and spectacular success' and '80 at 80: Commemorating Paul McCartney’s eightieth birthday'.
The biannual, peer-reviewed journal will publish original, rigorously researched essays and notes, as well as book and media reviews.
Source: Jonathan Chadwick/dailymail.co.uk
The Beatles had several successful albums that are still regarded today as classics. While each Beatles member felt differently about each album, one of their best-selling albums left George Harrison feeling “cold and bored.”In 1967, The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The album was a pivotal moment in the band’s tenure as it found the band at its most experimental. Many of the tracks were notable for their unique instruments, surreal lyrics, and psychedelic sounds. Even the artwork for the album featured The Beatles in a colorful collage, dressed in distinct outfits.
The album was immediately influential as the fashion and music of the late 1960s began to reflect what The Beatles captured in Sgt. Pepper’s. Upon its release, the album peaked at No. 1 on the official charts in the U.K. and on the Billboard charts in the U.S. 2.5 million copies had been sold in its first three months, making it the most successful Beatles album then.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
