Beatles News
In the 1960s, Beatlemania became so widespread that George Harrison said The Beatles were sometimes frightened by the unruly crush of fans. He explained that there were several near-misses with danger whenever they toured. While they found chaos wherever they went, Harrison explained that Texas felt particularly bad. He said that the first time they visited the state, the police were woefully unprepared for the sheer amount of fans who had come to see the band.
Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and John Lennon of The Beatles wave as they exit a plane.
In the 1960s, The Beatles inspired pandemonium wherever they went. A Scottish concert promoter, Andi Lothian, said the crowd was unlike anything he’d ever seen before.
55 years ago today, Pan Am flight 101 was greeted by over 5,000 Beatles fans as it arrived at New York's JFK airport, bringing The Beatles to the US for the first time and causing riotous scenes as they touched down.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Peter Jackson is quick to tell you he doesn’t have a favorite Beatle. Though he’s the soul of chatty cordiality in a call from his New Zealand headquarters, one senses that he finds the teen-magazine question has a whiff of impropriety to it: “I’ve always loved the Beatles as a group. You take any one member away and it’s not the Beatles anymore. I have to say, I love the Beatles because I love the music; I love the songs.”
There can be no doubt that Jackson, after his intensive review of 130 hours of audio and 57 hours of long-hidden video of the band at their career hinge point of January 1969, has no non-Beatle equal in knowledge of the group. If he has a humble brag it’s his, “I have no criticizing of the Beatles in my DNA,” but he’s no mere fan boy. His three-part, six-plus-hours “The Beatles: Get Back” documentary series on Disney+ is as unvarnished and all-inclusive as he could make it.
Source: Fred Schruers/latimes.com
Most of the time, George Harrison didn’t enjoy being a Beatle. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and on some occasions, the band’s producer George Martin either treated George as a junior member or a glorified session man. No one cared about his songs. Touring the world constantly throughout the first half of the 1960s aged him too.
However, somewhere along the way, George came to terms with being a Beatle. Releasing an album and playing for hundreds of fans suddenly wasn’t as daunting. George got a new generation of fans, and those who’d been through Beatlemania were older. No one was chasing him down anymore.
George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and Yoko Ono at The Beatles' Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1988.
Source: cheatsheet.com
George Harrison‘s wife, Olivia, had one of the hardest jobs in the world. Being Mrs. Harrison wasn’t always a walk in Friar Park. While she supported George at every turn, he was sometimes a lot to handle. There were hiccups in their marriage. However, they got over them.
When George met Olivia in 1974, he said he had “no voice and almost no body at times.” In Martin Scorsese’s documentary, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, Olivia said, “When I first met him, he said, ‘I don’t want you to think you’ve discovered something about me I don’t know. I’m not claiming to be this or that or anything. People think they found you out, when I’m not hiding anything.’
“I thought he was really somebody who was saying something that I connected with. He was really a very captivating person… I liked the music, I liked what he was doing. We just seemed like partners from the very beginning.”
Source: cheatsheet.com
A new photography book titled 'With a Little Help from My Lens (My Time with the Beatles)' will be showing rare and never-before-seen images of the Beatles on and off duty.
The images were shot by photographer Tommy Hanley, who had a close relationship with the English band during the 60s.
Following Tommy's death, his son Tony Hanley decided to revisit the original black and white negative photographs taken by his father, and reprint many of them into colour.
The book features around 280 photographs - some of which already are well known but others which have never been seen before.
Source: euronews.com
George Harrison could point to 1966 as the year that his understanding of the world changed, a shift for which he credits LSD. Though he did not intend to take the drug the first time, he said it fundamentally altered his perspective on things. While he appreciated the altered outlook, he said it also changed the way he thought of fame. After taking LSD, Harrison said that he realized he did not like being famous.
In 1965, Harrison and John Lennon had dinner at their dentist’s house. After the meal, they all had coffee. Once they’d finished, their dentist, John Riley, informed them that the sugar cubes were laced with LSD. When Riley told them, Lennon was angry, but Harrison wasn’t sure what it meant.
“The dentist said something to John, and John turned to me and said, ‘We’ve had LSD,'” Harrison said, per Vice. “I just thought, ‘Well, what’s that? So what? Let’s go!'”
Source: cheatsheet.com
George Harrison knew his 1980 memoir, I Me Mine, upset John Lennon. Months before he died, John admitted the book hurt him because George hardly mentioned him. He claimed he’d influenced George and helped him write songs.
However, George said John overestimated how much he influenced him.
In 1980, John told Playboy that George’s memoir hurt him. He was upset that George barely mentioned him, even though he’d acted like George’s big brother.
John said (per Beatles Interviews), “I was hurt by George’s book, ‘I, Me, Mine.’ He put a book out privately on his life that, by glaring omission, says that my influence on his life is absolutely zilch and nil.
“In his book, which is purportedly this clarity of vision of his influence on each song he wrote, he remembers every two-bit sax player or guitarist he met in subsequent years. I’m not in the book.” Playboy asked why.
Source: cheatsheet.com
George never forgot things, but he always moved on from them. He learned to do that through spirituality. This is the basis of All Things Must Pass, after all. George knew we were only on this earth for a short time, so he didn’t waste time on silly things.
He tried telling this to Paul. There was no point in fighting with Yoko.
There was a time when George and Paul initially had similar thoughts on Yoko Ono. Once John started bringing her to the recording studio, a place at that point where none of the Beatles’ women ever went, his bandmates began getting annoyed.
There was a situation concerning Yoko eating some digestive biscuits in the studio, which angered George. Then there was the time George insulted Yoko to her face.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney explained why he wrote The Beatles’ “Paperback Writer.”
He said the song was partly inspired by “archetypal” paperbacks.
Paul revealed what John Lennon said as his bandmate wrote the song.
Paul McCartney said The Beatles’ “Paperback Writer” was partly inspired by a newspaper and partly inspired by books. He had the idea for the song while driving to John Lennon’s home. Subsequently, John said a few things while Paul was writing the song.
In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul said he was driving to John’s house when the concept for “Paperback Writer” came to him. “You knew, the minute you got there, cup of tea and you’d sit and write, so it was always good if you had a theme,” he recalled.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Every time the Beatles come up, there’s the inevitable danger of hyperbole. But at the same time, it’s sort of hard to be that hyperbolic considering the scope of the group’s impact. Pop music and pop culture as we know it incubated in the ’50s, and then really blossomed in the ’60s — and the Beatles were at the very top of a feverishly, rapidly changing medium in tumultuous, transformative times. All these decades later, they still influence up-and-coming artists; new generations are still falling for them (on TikTok, they’re worshipped as if they were a currently active band); and their songs can still surprise and disorient no matter how long they’ve been in the atmosphere. Nobody really thought pop music was supposed to have a 60-plus year shelf life back then.
Source: Ryan Leas/stereogum.com
