Beatles News
Paul McCartney has revealed that he’s lost the notebook containing his and John Lennon‘s first songs. If Paul ever finds it, it would be instrumental to understanding one of music’s most famous songwriting partnerships.
n The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul explained that he and John thought of themselves as Lennon and McCartney from the beginning of their songwriting partnership.
He wrote, “It was because we’d heard of Gilbert and Sullivan, Rodgers and Hammerstein. Lennon and McCartney That’s good. There are two of us, and we can fall into that pattern.”
In those early days, Paul and John put their names next to their first songs in a school exercise notebook. “‘Love Me Do‘ came from around that period, as did ‘One After 909,'” Paul wrote. “That might have been as far back as 1957. About 10 or 15 years ago, I found that school exercise book. I put it in my bookcase. I’ve since lost it. I don’t know where it is. I think it might show up somewhere. It’s the first Lennon and McCartney manuscript.”
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney and his wife, Linda, experienced something horrific while they recorded 1973’s Band on the Run in Lagos, Nigeria. The former Beatle hoped working in the exotic place would help reinvigorate the semi-newly-formed Wings. After The Beatles split, Paul floundered. He didn’t know how to continue his music career and contemplated quitting. How do you follow The Beatles?
One night, Paul got his answer. Watching Johnny Cash and his band performing on TV inspired Paul to start a new band, Wings. Paul and his wife, Linda, had just started a family but were willing to begin their life over again. However, Wings had a bumpy start. With only 11 songs, Paul and Wings toured universities around the U.K., charging only 50p, just to get a following.
“It wasn’t exactly hippy, but that time was all about the two of us going off on this adventure,” Paul told the Independent. “It was about wanting to be free after being told what to do for so long.”
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
The surface-level view was that Ringo Starr had it made when he joined The Beatles. That might have been true, but things took a turn when the band broke up. He drank heavily as he tried to find his way artistically without the rest of the Fab Four and called himself a coward for one act in the 1970s. Soon after he embraced sobriety in 1988, Ringo faced his fears when he started playing music again with his first All-Starr Band.
When The Beatles broke up in 1970, Ringo released two solo albums the same year. He put out two more solo efforts by 1974, including the self-titled Ringo, which spawned several hits.
At the same time, he spent more time with friends such as the hard-partying Harry Nilsson, The Who drummer Keith Moon, and T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan. In the mid-1970s, Ringo lived with Nilsson and John Lennon in his former bandmate’s rented house for a time, where he continued his hard-partying lifestyle. When he found sobriety in 1988, Ringo admitted people were right to call his post-Beatles life sad.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison believed in “self-realization,” not religion. Contrary to popular belief, George never truly belonged to any religious organization. He preferred to take aspects of all spirituality to help him connect with his true self. In the mid-1960s, George took LSD, which he said opened his mind to God-consciousness. He learned more about what that meant when he met his spiritual and musical guru, Ravi Shankar. Suddenly, spiritualism was more interesting to George than being a Beatle.
In Raja-Yoga by Swami Vivekananda, Geoge read, “All people possess innate and eternal perfection… You are that which you seek. There is nothing to do but realize it.” Eventually, George did. He also discovered his spiritual journey wasn’t about any one religion.
His parents raised him as a Catholic. However, as he learned more about Hinduism and the Hare Krishna movement, he realized he could never truly join them either. It was all about finding your true self and having self-realization.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison liked that The Beatles‘ 1968 film, Yellow Submarine, required minimal effort from him and his bandmates. The filmmakers only needed their music to create the psychedelic film.
In a 1999 VH1 special, George said that the best part of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine was that they didn’t have to do anything to it.
“Actually, the thing that I like most about the movie was we didn’t really have to do anything to it,” George said. “They just took the music, we met with them, and they talked about basically what they were going to do.” Then, the filmmakers took it from there.
Paul McCartney said they did a great job translating each of the Fab Four’s personalities into cartoon characters.
In 1999, The Beatles reissued Yellow Submarine. George was surprised at how good the film’s songs sounded remastered.
“The sound of the cellos in ‘Eleanor Rigby,’ it’s just amazing when you think it’s-I mean, I said the cellos, there’s only one. It’s a string quartet, but it sounds like… It was recorded so well.”
Ringo Starr said hearing the new mix surprised him and Paul. As George said, much of the remastering had brought out sounds even the band didn’t know were there. It was ultra clear.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
On January 30, 1969, The Beatles played together for the final time on the rooftop of their company's building, Apple HQ, in London, UK. The performance was filmed by their documentarians, led by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who was filming the Let It Be movie to coincide with the release of their final album of the same name. Although they were threatened when they started playing, the police officer who was there that day has now laid down the truth.
PC Ray Dagg was just 19-years-old when he attempted to stop The Beatles' performance on the building's rooftop. At the time, a number of noise complaints had been submitted, potentially ruining their final public gig.
Footage of the gig showed a few police officers - including Dagg - threatening to arrest the band. However, the man himself has now claimed his words were nothing more than empty threats.
Source: Callum Crumlish/express.co.uk
Aside from writing and releasing music, the Beatles created A Hard Day’s Night. According to George Harrison, filming early in the morning was difficult for these self-described “night owls.” Here’s what we learned from one interview from 1964.
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Harrison, and Ringo Starr appeared in the Beatles, also creating films like Yellow Submarine and A Hard Day’s Night.
In 1964, this group released their music film, featuring the original song of the same title. They acted as themselves, detailing a typical day in the rock band. With A Hard Day’s Night as one of their first acting projects, there were some challenges for these musicians.
The Beatles earned praise for A Hard Day’s Night, appearing in promotional interviews together. Some challenging aspects were the work hours — and waking up early to film the original production.
Source: Julia Dzurillay/cheatsheet.com
The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout” inspired David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance.” Only one of the two songs reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The other song lasted longer on the chart.
David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” was co-produced by another famous musician. The musician drew influence from The Beatles‘ “Twist and Shout” while making the song. Subsequently, “Let’s Dance” became a massive hit in the United States.
During a 1995 interview with Interview Magazine, Bowie discussed his artistic evolution. “I tried passionately hard in the first part of the ’80s to fit in, and I had my first overground success,” he said. “I was suddenly no longer ‘the world’s biggest cult artist’ in popular music.”
Bowie discussed his feelings on “Let’s Dance” and his subsequent work. “I went mainstream in a major way with the song ‘Let’s Dance,'” he said. “I pandered to that in my next few albums, and what I found I had done was put a box around myself. It was very hard for people to see me as anything other than the person in the suit who did ‘Let’s Dance,’ and it was driving me mad — because it took all my passion for experimenting away.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney claims he was behind the title of The Beatles‘ “Eight Days a Week.” However, he started a rumor decades ago that drummer Ringo Starr came up with the title.
The littlest things inspire Paul, even passing phrases from those around him. One sentence was all it took to make a Beatles hit. Such was the case for “Eight Days a Week.”
In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul wrote that he came up with the song’s title after having a chauffeur drive him to John Lennon’s house. He needed a driver because the police had recently taken away his driver’s license after too much reckless driving.
“The problem was we all liked to drive fast, and I myself had been caught one too many times,” he explained. “The police took my licence away, and I was banned from driving for a year. If I wanted to get somewhere, I had to take a bus or train or sometimes hire a driver. By the time I was unbanned, we’d actually earned enough money to get a driver.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
When The Beatles hired Ringo Starr, original drummer Pete Best’s fans revolted, and manager Brian Epstein wondered if they were right to. Best’s looks and attitude onstage won him many fans. Though John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison didn’t feel that Best fit in with them, Epstein wondered if Starr would be any better. According to Starr himself, Epstein didn’t believe he had the personality for the job.Best joined The Beatles in 1960 and played with the group in Hamburg and Liverpool. In 1962, however, the band decided they wanted to move in a different direction.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
