Beatles News
Once George started writing songs, his and Paul’s relationship started cracking.
Paul, John Lennon, and The Beatles’ producer, George Martin, acted condescendingly when he came forward with his tunes. George felt like a junior member, and Paul started treating him like a glorified session man. Paul told George to play what he wanted, and George was rarely able to give his input. Meanwhile, George had to help Paul do tons of his songs before Paul even considered recording one of George’s.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Singer-songwriter Joan Osborne, this year’s headliner and honoree for the 42nd annual benefit concert honoring the late John Lennon, has long drawn inspiration from his unparalleled career.
“Lennon’s songs always showed me that music is a way for us to tell our deepest truths — to ourselves, to each other and to the wider world,” said Osborne, who will be joined Oct. 8 by fellow artists including Willie Nile and Catherine Russell at the annual celebration of the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.
The John Lennon Tribute show will include songs dating from his days with the Beatles, including material from a pair of classic Fab Four albums: “Rubber Soul” and “Revolver.”
Tickets are already on sale for the show at Symphony Space in Manhattan, with the event slated for the day before what would have been Lennon’s 82nd birthday. He was just 40 when shot to death by a deranged fan outside his Upper West Side home on the night of Dec. 8, 1980.
Source: Larry McShane/nydailynews.com
Ringo Starr is celebrating his 82nd birthday on July 7 by gathering in Los Angeles for his annual Peace & Love Birthday event with his family, friends, and bandmates, and sending his message out to space.
At noon, when Starr gives his traditional “Peace and Love” exclamation, the Artemis Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas will beam his message and music—Starr’s 2021 single “Let’s Change The World” and “Star Song,” the music the stars made upon his birth as mapped out by Artemis—to the International Space Station, where it will “orbit around the Earth, passing over many countries and much of the Earth’s population and beam back down messages of peace and love while also traveling out to distant stars,” according to an official descriptor of the event.
Source: americansongwriter.com
It's probably fair to say that each of the Fab Four achieved a sort of musical immortality thanks to their time with the Beatles. At the 2022 Glastonbury festival, Yahoo! News reports, Paul McCartney was the star of the show, the oldest musician to headline the event in its history. The 80-year-old's set reached a viewership of 3.9 million people on the UK's BBC One, and the weekend as a whole shattered streaming records.
Still, it's not all about flexing a life-long license to rock out and being incredibly rich. the Beatles, of course, were and remain adored around the world, perhaps the most beloved band in history. According to Britannica, the term "Beatlemania" began to be used by the British press as early as 1963, and the scale of it all just increased from there.
Source: Chris Littlechild/grunge.com
George Harrison had enough to deal with during the making of All Things Must Pass, and deciding whether or not to make “My Sweet Lord” into a single was just another dilemma.
George had just left one of the most famous bands in history, The Beatles, and although he often felt constipated in the band, he didn’t quite know what he wanted to do now that he was set free. He knew he had a stockpile of songs but didn’t know whether he wanted to release them.
There were other issues in his life as well. His mother died, his marriage was disintegrating, and he’d recently purchased a run-down mansion. Regardless of what was going on around him, though, George embarked on what was one of his most creative periods. It was a very dualistic time for him, but he had the album all mapped out before he even set foot in the recording studio.
Source: cheatsheet.com
The Beatles released a hit called “Don’t Let Me Down” near the end of their time together. Subsequently, a 2010s group created a song with the same title that was more successful. The group recruited a popular singer to perform vocals on the song.
In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul discussed the origin of “Don’t Let Me Down.” “I think it was a genuine cry for help,” said. “It was a good song. We recorded it in the basement of Apple for Let It Be and later did it up on the roof for the film. We went through it quite a lot for this one.”
Paul discussed his role in recording the track. “I sang harmony on it, which makes me wonder if I helped with a couple of words, but I don’t think so,” he said.” It was John’s song.”
Source: cheatsheet.com
The death of John Lennon is a tragic chapter in the story of The Beatles.
On December 8 1980, the 40-year-old was gunned down in the archway of his Manhattan home. Crazed fan Mark David Chapman shot Lennon four times from close range and despite being rushed to hospital, the former Beatle died.
The world was well and truly shaken, as 30,000 fans gathered in Liverpool for ten minutes silence to remember their hometown hero, as well as over over 225,000 in Central Park, New York.
Despite the mass mourning, there was no official funeral for John, with Yoko Ono releasing a statement the day after his death. She said: "There is no funeral for John. John loved and prayed for the human race. Please do the same for him. Love, Yoko and Sean."
His remains were cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, Westchester County, New York. His former bandmates reacted differently to the news.
Source: Aaron Curran/liverpoolecho.co.uk
Paul McCartney almost always appeared with the Beatles playing a bass: typically either a Höfner 500/1 or Rickenbacker 4001S.
But from the earliest days of his long musical career, McCartney was drawn to the guitar, reaching for a six-string in the studio with the Beatles and Wings, as well as on solo recordings.
In this gem from the GP archives, Macca discusses how he ended up playing bass in the Beatles, the tortoise and hare race of melody versus speed, and why he likes heavy metal.
The following interview extract originally appeared in the July 1990 issue of Guitar Player…
Source: Tom Mulhern, Rod Brakes/guitarplayer.com
After The Beatles split up, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr embarked on solo careers. As they worked together for years, reporters often asked what they thought about the others’ work. When Lennon spoke about Harrison’s solo career, he was slightly dismissive. He explained that he felt Harrison’s talents developed as a direct result of working with Lennon and McCartney.When Harrison joined The Beatles, he was still a teenager. Harrison greatly admired his older bandmates, including Lennon.
“He told me he really, really admired John,” Tom Petty told Rolling Stone. “He probably wanted John’s acceptance pretty bad, you know?”
“I’d put on ‘Paperback Writer’ and say, ‘I love the guitar on that,’ and he’d say,’ “Oh, that’s Paul.’ I put all these other Beatles tracks on: ‘Oh, that’s Paul,'” Peter Frampton told the Daily Mail. “It wasn’t until then I realized he had been stifled. It was very frustrating for George.”
Source: cheatsheet.com
After The Beatles split, George Harrison said people came in “grabbing and plundering as much as they could.” Everyone wanted a piece of one of the most successful bands of the 1960s. However, George said they wouldn’t get away with it.
However, when The Beatles broke up, they left room for everyone to come in and steal everything they’d done.
In a 1987 interview with Creem Magazine, George spoke about what happened to The Beatles’ catalog shortly before they split.
The Beatles’ music publisher, Dick James, who earned a high percentage of the band’s publishing company, Northern Songs, sold the company to ATV Music without letting John or Paul buy him out. Then in 1985, Michael Jackson bought ATV Music. George was thankful he didn’t write as many Beatles songs as John and Paul.
Source: cheatsheet.com
