Beatles News
Apart from working with the Beatles, John Lennon also collaborated with the love of his life, Yoko Ono. In 1980, he and Ono released their collaborative effort ‘Double Fantasy.’ Three weeks after its release, Lennon was shot and killed by a Beatles fan named Mark David Chapman.
On December 8, 1980, John Lennon also gave his last interview before his tragic passing. Speaking to RKO Radio Network’s DJ Dave Sholin and Laurie Kaye, Lennon revealed his opinion on Bruce Springsteen and praised one of The Boss’ songs.
Source: Elif Ozden/rockcelebrities.net
John Lennon‘s son, Sean Ono Lennon, inspired two similarly-named songs from the former Beatle’s final album, Double Fantasy. Yoko Ono wrote one of the songs. Subsequently, she revealed she was making a statement about men in general with the track’s lyrics.
“Well, what can I say?” John replied. “It’s about Sean. It’s self-explanatory. The music and the lyric came at the same time.”
Yoko wrote a similarly titled song, “Beautiful Boys,” for Double Fantasy. She discussed the track too. “That speaks for itself, really,” she said. “It’s a message to men. John and Sean inspired me, but the third verse is about all the beautiful boys of the world. That’s sort of like the extension of the idea. I had relationships with men, but it was always ‘You know where the door is.'”
Source: cheatsheet.com
Bob Dylan had something witty to say after listening to The Beatles‘ 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club. Dylan met the band in 1964. Shortly after, the two began to inspire each other.
Greene wrote The Beatles were “so mesmerized by his wise lyrics and simple chords that they played the albums constantly in their Hôtel George V suite.”
Then, Dylan found the band and was similarly impressed. “Dylan drove cross-country from Denver to New York in 1963 with friend and photographer Barry Feinstein, playing the radio nonstop, and by midjourney 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.
“‘Everybody else thought they were for the teenyboppers, that they were going to pass right away, but it was obvious to me that they had staying power.'”
Source: cheatsheet.com
When Tom Petty started working on his debut solo album, Full Moon Fever, he turned to George Harrison for help. The two musicians were friends and had worked together in The Traveling Wilburys. Harrison was a fan of the album and helped champion it. He also helped Petty improve some of the songs. Petty explained that there was one line in “I Won’t Back Down” that confused Harrison. His feedback helped bring the song to its finished form.“I think I needed a friend really badly,” he said in the book Petty: The Biography by Warren Zanes. “My friendship with the band was a different kind of friendship. And it was frayed. I’d become very lonely. George came along, and we got so close; it was like we had known each other in some other life or something. We were pals within minutes of meeting each other.”
Source: cheatsheet.com
George Harrison said Jeff Lynne’s singing voice made him want to try harder on his vocals for his 1987 album, Cloud Nine. However, Lynne might have formed his singing voice on George’s.
For the most part, George’s singing voice was always in top form. Except during his first solo American tour in 1974.
Before his Dark Horse Tour, George did a lot of recording. It exhausted him and wore out his voice.
“That was the problem in 1974, when I toured America,” George explained to Rolling Stone in 1979. “I’d done three albums before I went on the road, and I was still trying to finish my own album as we were rehearsing, and also we’d done this other tour in Europe with these classical Indian musicians. By the time it came to going on the road I was already exhausted.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Over the weekend, the Hollywood Critics Association hosted its 2nd Annual HCA TV Awards at The Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles. Disney picked up a number of awards at the event, with “Dopesick” and “Abbott Elementary” picking up multiple awards. Also, What’s On Disney Plus’s writer Mama’s Geeky Tessa Smith presented one of the awards during the ceremony.
Disney+ Originals picked up a number of awards including “The Beatles: Get Back” winning in the Best Streaming Docuseries or Non-Fiction Series category. While “Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers” won the award for Best Streaming Movie.
Source: Roger Palmer/whatsondisneyplus.com
George Harrison made it his life’s work to raise consciousness, in every sense of the phrase. In 1971, he managed the extraordinary combination of both raising money for a desperate humanitarian plight in South Asia, and creating a hit record about it.
Probably not too many radio programmers or record buyers knew very much about the former East Pakistan until Harrison used his influence to publicise the country’s plight. He had been deeply moved when his friend Ravi Shankar brought to his attention the human disaster in which millions of refugees from the country were starving, because of the effects of the Bhola cyclone of 1970 and the Liberation War.
Source: Paul Sexton/yahoo.com
In 1964, pop groups in America didn't talk about politics or social issues. When they spoke to the press at all, it was about very superficial, Tiger Beat-style topics such as what they like to do in their dressing room before a show or whether they had favourite pets at home.
When The Beatles arrived on the scene in 1964, they changed all that. Their invasion of America was not just about music and fashion, but reshaping the very idea of a pop star into a thinking, feeling, three-dimensional human being with principles and opinions.
And all four Beatles were united in their opinion on the policies of racial segregation that were in practice through much of the southern United States. So much so that in the midst of their 23-city tour, they issued a brief, forceful press statement that said: “We will not appear unless Negroes are allowed to sit anywhere.” The Fabs were looking ahead to a date at the Gator Bowl Stadium in Jacksonville, FL, where they'd heard that blacks were confined to the upper tiers at public events.
Source:Bill DeMain/loudersound.com
John Lennon said The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever” reflected feelings he had since his childhood. In addition, he said a lyric of the song was about how he must be “crazy” or “a genius.” Notably, the song appeared on the soundtrack album of one of The Beatles’ movies.The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono is an interview from 1980. In it, John talks about “Strawberry Fields Forever” at length. “The second line goes, ‘No one I think is in my tree,'” John said. That line actually comes much later in the song than John recalled. “Well, what I was trying to say in that line is ‘Nobody seems to be as hip as me, therefore I must be crazy or a genius.'”
Source: cheatsheet.com
Chances are that you had a few extra guests over the Thanksgiving holiday – namely John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison. Peter Jackson’s “The Beatles: Get Back,” was a three-night Thanksgiving event on Disney+, one that featured previously unseen material from the lead-up to their last-ever live public performance, is astounding and eye-opening, an intimate portrait of larger-than-life creative titans.
“The Beatles: Get Back” is easily one of the premier television events of the year – and if you need some nudging in the direction of the Fab Four, well, here are all the reasons that you should make it appointment viewing.
Source: Drew Taylor/thewrap.com
