Beatles News
Rare photos of The Beatles performing in their early days at Liverpool's Cavern Club have been discovered.
The images were taken in 1961, a year before their debut single Love Me Do was released.
The photos show Sir Paul McCartney and John Lennon singing, with George Harrison on guitar and a partly-obscured original drummer Pete Best.
Historian Mark Lewisohn described them as "whippet-thin under-nourished lads" following their tour to Germany.
The band, who were then aged between 18 and 20, had recently returned from performing in Hamburg, where they had been "slogging 500 stage hours in 90 days", he said.
"So slender has this marathon made them, it's as if their heads and bodies are stranger.
Source: BBC News
Ringo Starr has fond memories of making The Beatles’ Abbey Road despite the band’s status as the time. Intraband fighting had the Fab Four on the verge of shattering for good, but the group pulled together and made a rare album — one whose reputation seems to continue growing nearly 55 years later. Ringo said some of his strongest memories from making Abbey Road are of the band playing together again, but he admitted he has a more selfish reason for loving those sessions.Ringo once called “Rain” a weird Beatles song because he never played a beat like that. He also laid down a performance for the ages on “Tomorrow Never Knows,” but Abbey Road was Ringo’s shining moment.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
Eric Idle said he needed to see George Harrison on his deathbed in 2001. Otherwise, he would’ve regretted not seeing his friend one last time. The comedian wasn’t George’s only friend who felt that way.
Idle and George became friends in the 1970s. They met at a Monty Python and the Holy Grail screening, smoked pot in the projection room, went to dinner, then the recording studio, and proceeded to talk for the next 48 hours. They bonded over their similar roles in their respective groups.
Idle said it was love at first sight between them. Later, George helped Idle and Monty Python produce Life of Brian, allowing the friends to collaborate. The pair remained friends who were there for each other. After George’s 1999 home invasion, Idle was at his side immediately.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison said he didn’t enjoy his singing in The Beatles. He didn’t sing too much because John Lennon and Paul McCartney hardly allowed him to come forward with his songs. However, George’s singing wasn’t as bad as he thought. He was often overly critical of himself.
When George was a teenager, John Lennon and Paul McCartney asked him to join The Quarryman, later The Beatles. Like all teenage boys, George’s voice was changing, getting deeper. When The Beatles started their residency in Hamburg, Germany, George was still only 17 years old.
During the band’s all-night performances, John, Paul, and George sang anything and everything to get an audience to stick around. Then, when they started their residency at The Cavern Club, the band continued to be pros on stage.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
Ringo Starr’s great drumming and affable personality earned him a place in the musical pantheon, but even legends misfire from time to time. On his third album Ringo, Starr included a cover of the song “You’re Sixteen.” The content of this song wasn’t as glaringly problematic when it was released, but the notion of an adult man signing about the beauty of an adolescent girl only gets creepier with time. The incorporation of a young Carrie Fisher into the promotion of the song is also uncomfortable, given the significant difference in age between her and Starr. Released in 1973, Ringo is a notable record for several reasons. It is one of the few occasions where all four of the Beatles collaborated on the same project, albeit on different songs. It was also the commercial peak of Starr’s solo career.
Source: cheatsheet.com
George Harrison said The Rutles “liberated” him from The Beatles‘ legacy. For most of his solo career, George had to deal with being tied to his famous former band. He grew sick of it fast.
However, the parody helped George come to terms with The Beatles.
In 1975, Eric Idle and Neil Innes created a sketch that followed a fictional band based on The Beatles called The Rutles. The sketch appeared on Idle’s BBC television series Rutland Weekend Television later that year. Then, the fake band became real when they recorded Beatle-y songs for an album called The Rutland Weekend Songbook.
In 1976, Idle played clips of The Rutles on SNL. The producer of the late-night comedy show, Lorne Michaels, liked the sketch and agreed to produce The Rutles‘ movie, All You Need Is Cash, with Idle. The Rutles line-up included Ron Nasty (Innes), Dirk McQuickly (Idle), Stig O’Hara (Ricky Fataar), and Barry Wom (John Halsey).
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
When the Beatles started work on their masterpiece Revolver, in April 1966, they knew they were after the sound of the future. And they got there on the very first day of the sessions, with the wildly experimental buzz of “Tomorrow Never Knows (Take 1).” The psychedelic outtake was released on Friday and it’s a taste of the new Super Deluxe Edition of Revolver, which arrives on October 28. The new edition tells the story of how the Beatles took their gigantic creative leap into the unknown. As producer Giles Martin says, “It’s the Beatles punching their way out of a bag. They’re saying, ‘We’re no longer going to be constrained by anything.’”
Source: Rob Sheffield/yahoo.com
Paul McCartney has been writing songs since he was a teenager and making money with his music for more than 60 years. Macca had an easy time writing songs with John Lennon in The Beatles. He found new artists to collaborate with when the band broke up, but Paul said once got a bit defensive when Michael Jackson asked to work with him.A photo of him and John Lennon he saw later reminded Paul he wasn’t the villain of The Beatles’ split, but he didn’t necessarily believe that at the time. His relationship with John was so strong that he has dreams that sound like nightmares with Lennon in them. Still, he didn’t hesitate to form a new band not long after the Fab Four broke up.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
Ringo Starr was a late addition to The Beatles.
Ringo Starr said that he was angry for a long time after the band broke up.
Years after The Beatles broke up, Ringo Starr said he has calmed down.
Ringo Starr spent years of his life dedicated to The Beatles and found it difficult to cope after the band broke up. He explained that for two decades, he stewed about the end of the band and tried to cope with it using alcohol. He said that because of this, many of his post-Beatle years are a blur to him. These days, though, Starr says he’s dedicated himself to his health.
Starr joined The Beatles in 1962, replacing the original drummer, Pete Best. His bandmates quickly realized that he would be a good fit in the group.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
The British Library will be exhibiting the expanded archive of Hunter Davies, the only approved biographer of The Beatles.
Building upon Davies’ 2013 donations to the library, the collection will include “notebooks he used during conversations, photos and sketches” from his time spent working on The Beatles’ biography. There will also be a chance to see “Super 8 movie footage filmed by Hunter while on holiday with Paul and Linda McCartney”.
“The further we get from The Beatles, the bigger they become,” explains Davies. “I never thought all these years later my scruffy notebooks would be of such interest – and I’m pleased that they’ll be made available to a wider audience of Beatles fans and researchers through the British Library”.
Source: Kelly Doherty/thevinylfactory.com
