Beatles News
In 1980, Ringo Starr flew to New York after receiving the news that his former Beatles bandmate John Lennon had been murdered. Like the rest of The Beatles, Starr was stunned by the news and knew that Yoko Ono needed support. When he arrived, though, he wasn’t happy with the scene he found outside Lennon and Ono’s apartment building. Many Beatles fans had gathered there, and Starr said he was disgusted with their behavior.
The Beatles, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and George Harrison, pose together in front of a white brick wall.
In 1980, Lennon and Ono were walking up to their apartment building in New York when a fan, Mark David Chapman, shot Lennon multiple times. Chapman had been waiting outside the building all day and had even had Lennon autograph an album that afternoon.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison wasn’t offended that his son, Dhani, wanted him to play Chuck Berry songs during his Prince’s Trust performance in 1987. The former Beatle had fallen in love with the rock ‘n’ roll legend years before Dhani, so he understood. Who could beat Berry’s songs?
Dhani became obsessed with Chuck Berry’s music through The Beach Boys and after watching 1985’s Teen Wolf. The Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ U.S.A.” plays in the film, and Dhani loved the tune. However, George couldn’t let his son like the song without schooling him on who really wrote it.
George told Rolling Stone, “I said, ‘That’s really good, but you want to hear where that came from,’ and I played him ‘Sweet Little Sixteen.’ I made him a Chuck Berry tape, and he takes it to school with his Walkman.”
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison said people didn’t know his fellow Traveling Wilbury, Roy Orbison, was funny because he always wrote sad songs. The former Beatle knew what it was like to have people assume things of him.
In 1963, The Beatles were on the same tour as the “Crying” singer. George and Orbison didn’t get close, but Orbison’s influence on him and The Beatles is undeniable.
In 1988, George and Orbison became bandmates in the supergroup, The Traveling Wilburys. Like everyone else in the band, Orbison joined by accident. George needed an extra song for his 1987 album, Cloud Nine. He asked Jeff Lynne to help him while the pair were out to dinner with Orbison. The older singer asked if he could come to watch them work. They headed to Bob Dylan’s studio and picked Tom Petty up along the way.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
he Beatles are arguably the most famous rock band of all time. The group broke up in 1970 and has since sold over 1 billion albums worldwide. But what instrument did each of the Beatles play? Well, let’s find out!
John Lennon
John Lennon played the acoustic guitar, electric guitar, harmonica, piano, banjo and drums. He also played saxophone on one of his own songs called ‘I’m Only Sleeping’.
Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney played bass, guitar and drums for the Beatles. He is an accomplished pianist and has been a professional musician since his teens. As a child in Liverpool, he learned how to play piano from his father, who was part of a local jazz band. Paul McCartney wrote many of the Beatles’ songs including “Yesterday” which he wrote when he was 16 years old.
Source: Lyle Opolentisima/dailyinfographic.com
George Harrison didn’t want to be a part of any John Lennon tributes after his former bandmate died in 1980. However, that didn’t mean George loved John any less.
George and John didn’t immediately hit it off when they first met. John thought George was too young to join The Beatles and didn’t like that he tagged along like a little brother. However, George knew how to hold his own whenever John made biting remarks.
Eventually, they grew to respect one another. When George started his spiritual journey, John watched, amazed. They bonded over spirituality, chanting while sailing through the Greek Islands and meditating for days at the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram in India.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
The Beatles‘ album Revolver, which first topped the Billboard 200 album chart in 1966, is back in the top five, thanks to a deluxe special edition reissue that came out October 28.
The special edition, which is available in a variety of formats, features demos, alternate versions, outtakes and different mixes of classics like “Yellow Submarine,” “Got to Get You Into My Life,” “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “Eleanor Rigby,” as well as different takes of the non-album tracks “Paperback Writer” and “Rain.” It sold 54,000 units, enough to reenter the chart at #4.
Revolver is the latest in an ongoing series of Beatles studio albums that are being reissued in expanded versions. It follows the releases of expanded reissues of Let It Be last year, Abbey Road in 2019, The Beatles aka The White Album in 2018 and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 2017.
Source: kslx.com/Classic Rock News
In the 1970s, John Lennon began a relationship with May Pang, his and Yoko Ono’s assistant. Ono did not view the affair as a betrayal; in fact, she helped orchestrate it. Pang was in love with Lennon, but she felt that Ono still had a measure of control over the relationship. Pang believed that Lennon liked it this way. She said he sought out partners who were able to control him.
Lennon and Ono married in 1969 and began to face marital problems in the early 1970s. Pang worked at Apple Corps and said that Ono approached her about starting a relationship with Lennon.
“Yes, Yoko did approach me, and I thought it was insane,” she told Variety. “I told her I wasn’t interested at all. They were having problems in their marriage; they actually weren’t talking to each other. But John spontaneously decided to go to L.A. on his own and asked me to go with him. Yoko wasn’t even aware we had gone until after we left.”
Pang and Lennon were together for roughly 18 months during his Lost Weekend phase. Ono said this didn’t upset her.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Before they started dating, Cynthia Lennon wanted to catch John Lennon’s attention. After an incident with another blonde student, she dyed her hair even more blonde. Here’s what we learned from the 2005 memoir John.
Lennon is one of the songwriters behind “Hey Jude,” “Twist and Shout,” and “In My Life.” Before even joining the Beatles, Lennon made music with Paul McCartney and George Harrison as the Quarrymen.
Lennon was the oldest of his bandmates, attending college at the same time they wrote and performed.
Before he was in the Beatles, John Lennon attended Liverpool College of Art, now part of Liverpool John Moores University. There, he met his girlfriend Cynthia Powell, who said that Lennon “wasn’t her type” at first.
He was the class clown and often teased her with the nickname “Miss Powell.” Eventually, Cynthia Lennon began falling for the musician.
Source: Julia Dzurillay/cheatsheet.com
Whether together or in their solo careers, the members of The Beatles are best known for their work as songwriters. Given that their discography contains some of the most beloved and influential music made in the 20th century, that’s not at all surprising. But the band’s members also had some notable sidelines — George Harrison’s work in film production comes to mind, for one thing.
But The Beatles also had a literary side. Paul McCartney’s poems and lyrics have been published to much acclaim, while Lennon also made a few headways into the world of books. And it turns out that the two of them worked on a literary project together in their time before the Beatles — namely, a work for the stage.
A new article at Far Out has more details on this obscure (and, ultimately, uncompleted) venture, which McCartney discussed on an interview with the BBC program This Cultured Life. McCartney said that he recently discovered the manuscript at his home. “It’s quite a funny little thing,” he told host John Wilson. “It’s called Pilchard and it’s about the Messiah.”
Source: Tobias Carroll/insidehook.com
Paul McCartney has written hundreds of hit songs by himself and collaborated with other artists, including John Lennon and his late wife, Linda. While these duos created successful singles and albums, McCartney reveals that Lennon and Linda’s songwriting processes differed.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney were frequent collaborators during their time with The Beatles. The two were responsible for many of The Beatles’ greatest hits, including songs like “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “Eight Days a Week,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Hello Goodbye,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and “Yellow Submarine.” There is debate on who deserved more credit for specific songs, but the two were a dynamic duo in the 1960s.
After leaving The Beatles, McCartney worked with Linda on many songs in his solo career and with Wings. The two are credited with writing the album Ram together and the song “Live and Let Die” for the 1973 James Bond movie of the same name. Linda did write some songs by herself that appeared in her posthumous album Wide Prairie.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
