Beatles News
Ringo Starr had a habit of always signing fan mail and sending it back to whoever wanted his autograph. However, he posted a video one day alerting his fans that any further fan mail would be ignored. Ringo didn’t tell his fans why he abruptly changed his mind but later explained why he no longer gave out his autograph.
The Beatles are an iconic band, and any piece of memorabilia containing their autograph has high value. Ringo Starr often gave out his signature but abruptly stopped in 2008. He shared a video with his fans and, in the nicest way possible, told them that all future fan mail would be ignored.
“Please, after the 20th of October, do not send fan mail to any address that you have,” Ringo stated. “Nothing will be signed after the 20th of October. If that has the date on the envelope, it’s going to be tossed. I’m warning you with peace and love. I have too much to do.”
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison didn’t think getting older was a reason to pack up and stop being a rock star. The former Beatle planned on going for decades, but, unfortunately, he didn’t get to.
During a 1987 interview with Entertainment Tonight, George explained that when he was a child, all he wanted to do was be in a band and play rock ‘n’ roll. Every kid wanted to do that when they were younger, but rock ‘n’ roll is for all ages.
“It’s a natural thing when you’re a kid, you want to get a guitar and be in a band,” George said. “I think rock ‘n’ roll will always go hand in hand with youth. But at the same time, and I recall John Lennon saying, ‘Don’t trust anybody over 30.’ We all get there and I don’t think it’s a reason to pack up just because you hit 40.”
Entertainment Tonight asked the former Beatle how much longer he’ll rock ‘n’ roll. “I don’t know,” he said. “Spose until I fall over.” He said if Chuck Berry could rock into his 60s, so could he.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison said releasing new music was complicated because he wasn’t competitive. How could he have competed against John Lennon and Paul McCartney in The Beatles? George didn’t want to be competitive in his solo career either. He didn’t want to promote his work like everyone else. In the early days of The Beatles, John and Paul appointed themselves the chief songwriters. Neither George nor Ringo Starr ever showed interest. However, that changed when George realized he could write a song just as good as any Lennon-McCartney tune. He wrote “Don’t Bother Me” in 1963. Eventually, George started writing more, but John and Paul gave him a two to three-tune quota per Beatles album. Despite receiving no encouragement from his bandmates, George didn’t stop writing songs, and they mounted up. He wasn’t releasing them fast enough but wasn’t confident to push.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
After The Beatles broke up, John Lennon made it a point to include more political messaging in his music. He and Yoko Ono were antiwar advocates, and he wanted his songs to reflect this. He said he wanted to write something meaningful, unlike The Beatles’ music. Five years into his solo career, though, Lennon said that writing politics into his music had nearly ruined it.
After The Beatles broke up, the band’s former members began releasing solo albums. Lennon wanted to set himself apart from his bandmates, particularly Paul McCartney.
“John immediately went into his home recording studio, even though it was still under construction, to make a new solo album, Imagine, which he hoped would show the world where he stood in relation to the solo albums of Paul McCartney,” Lennon’s girlfriend May Pang wrote in the book Loving John.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney and John Lennon created a fascinating narrative when they wrote “Eleanor Rigby.” The story revolves around two characters who live tragic lives filled with loneliness. While the story is fictional, the origin behind the track has some truth and a haunting connection that McCartney discovered years later.
“Eleanor Rigby’ is a depressing song by The Beatles, who typically write upbeat, optimistic music. In an interview with GQ, Paul McCartney said that the idea for the story of “Eleanor Rigby” was based on an old lady he knew in his hometown of Liverpool. He thought this idea of a lonely old woman would make for an intriguing character.
“When I was really little, I lived on what we call a housing estate, which is like a project. There were a lot of old ladies,” McCartney explained. “And I enjoyed sitting down with these older ladies because they had these great stories, and in this case, about World War II. One in particular who I used to visit, and I’d go shopping for her, she couldn’t get out. So, I remember her. So, I had that figure in my mind of a sort of lonely old lady.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
Everyone tries their best to do a solid impression of The Beatles. All four members have unique Liverpool dialects that many people try to perfect. Some do it better than others, and Paul McCartney shared which celebrity he believes does the best impression of him.
McCartney has one of the most distinct voices in entertainment. Many can recognize his singing voice, along with his normal speaking voice. It’s easy enough to impersonate, but it’s hard to get perfect. In an interview with the Smartless podcast, McCartney explained what many of his impersonators get wrong.
“I don’t think they quite get it,” McCartney said. “Americans have got this sort of ‘Oh, hello, it’s Paul. Hey, how you doing?’…Generally, it’s not quite…My voice has changed. I look at old interviews with The Beatles, and it was much more Liverpool. But now I’ve lived out of Liverpool much more than I have lived in Liverpool. So, your voice changes.”
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/ cheatsheet.com
Ringo Starr is an award-winning drummer best known as a “good-natured” member in the Beatles. He wrote original songs under the stage name, with John Lennon’s ex-wife elaborating on his choice to use a stage name. Here’s the meaning behind this artist’s alias, as noted in the 2005 memoir John.
As the last member to join the Beatles, Ringo Starr functioned as the group’s drummer, performing on “Hey Jude,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Twist and Shout,” and other hits by the rock band.
Although most listeners know him by his stage name, Ringo Starr’s birth name is Richard Starkey. When he was knighted, he also used his real name officially becoming Sir Richard Starkey.
In her 2005 memoir, Cynthia Lennon described her first impressions of the Beatles, meeting George Harrison was he was only 16 years old and only meeting Ringo Starr after she married Lennon. In John, she also shared her perspective on Ringo Starr’s name change from Richard Starkey (and the meaning behind his stage name).
Source: Julia Dzurillay/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison had temporarily quit The Beatles in January 1969, disillusioned with their fraught sessions after witnessing the domestic bliss of The Band and their home studio set-up in Woodstock the previous November. What he saw in New York suggested a cooler, more democratic process was possible. The tensions in which he was mired at that time bore a handful of songs that were at once spiteful yet contemplative, including “I Me Mine” and “Wah Wah.”
“Run Of The Mill” is similarly probing; ironically, its lyrics were first scrawled across an envelope from Apple, the company that would irrevocably tear the group apart over differences of opinion regarding its management. A few weeks after Paul McCartney announced to the world in April 1970 that The Beatles had split, Harrison was in New York to discuss starting work on a solo album with Phil Spector, playing the producer “Run Of The Mill” and a selection of songs he’d earmarked for it. While the majority of “Run Of The Mill”’s ire is purportedly aimed at McCartney, the song also serves as a cautionary tale of owning one’s actions: “No one around you will carry the blame for you,” George sings. “No one around you will love you today/And throw it all away.”
Source: Simon Harper/yahoo.com
While there is more than a little debate about the validity of the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour (released 11/27/67) as a bonafide long-player, the practical fact of the matter is that the ‘album’ was originally a release cobbled together by the group’s American label, Capitol Records, as a means of maximizing holiday record sales back in late 1967.
As originally issued in the Beatles’ native country on Parlophone Records, Magical Mystery Tour consisted of six cuts split between two extended play records. In the United States, those half-dozen tracks were combined with singles released subsequent to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, plus the magnificent double-A side from the previous February “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever”.
Source: Doug Collette/glidemagazine.com
Before the Beatles were international superstars, John Lennon began his relationship with Cynthia Lennon. After an unexpected pregnancy with his then-girlfriend, John Lennon was “concern[ed]” about having a wife and being in a rock band. Here’s what we learned from the 2005 memoir John.
While attending college, John Lennon began his relationship with his college classmate Cynthia Lennon (then Powell). The two dated for several months, with Cynthia Lennon noting the boys’ first mini-tour — a six-week stint in Germany.
Shortly after the Beatles added Ringo Starr to their lineup, John and Cynthia Lennon got married. This was prompted by an unexpected pregnancy, which John Lenon reacted to positively, according to his then-girlfriend.
“Neither of us planned to have a baby, Cyn, but I love you and I’m not going to leave you now,” Cynthia Lennon recalled in her 2005 memoir, John.
Source: Julia Dzurillay/cheatsheet.com
