Beatles News
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (released 5/26/67) may not be the Beatles’ best album, but it’s certainly the most famous. The reverberations arising from its release continue even today, over a half-century after the album came out and while (over?) much has been made of every element of the title from its cover to its production to its concept, it is perhaps most noteworthy for representing the logical and perhaps inevitable extension of the four Liverpudlians’ utterly confident creative mindset from the very outset of their career to that point.
Source: Doug Collette/glidemagazine.com
At Wake Forest University’s Truist Field, the May 21 stop on his highly-anticipated 13-city “GOT BACK” Tour, Paul McCartney got back to where he belongs: on-stage to a crowd of nearly 32,000 adoring fans. Charisma reverberated across the audience, for whom McCartney paid tribute and bestowed gratitude through the evening — clocking 36 songs over roughly 2.5 hours of nonstop hits and story time banter.
Mixing material throughout the ages, “Can’t Buy Me Love” kicked things off with a Beatles-Wings sandwich: “Junior’s Farm” and “Letting Go,” followed by “Got to Get You Into My Life;” chased with the McCartney single, “Come On to Me,” before Wings’ “Let Me Roll It” meshed with a “Foxy Lady” jam amongst memories of Jimi Hendrix’s response to Sgt. Pepper.
Source: Katei Cranford/yesweekly.com
The Beatles' popularity did not impress a film director - and it made John Lennon unhappy.
The Beatles released hit songs that everyone loved - and still loves - even though years have already passed. However, while they were making their first-ever big-screen movie, the band suffered a major blow after a film director rejected one of their songs.
In the mid-1960s, the hit band decided to create feature films after releasing albums and having tours around the globe. Their first project was 1964, "A Hard Day's Night."
The film focused on the behind-the-scenes featuring the Fab Four before their TV appearance.
As part of the movie, a film director asked them to write and record the film's music. Lennon, for his part, made The Beatles' song "I'll Cry Instead."
Source: Angeline Sicily/musictimes.com
The pair last met in the place where John would ultimately be killed
The story of The Beatles is equally one of tragedy as it is one of musical brilliance.
The world reeled as John Lennon was gunned down on a New York balcony in 1980 at the age of 40. Tragically, members of the band were not on the best of terms when this took place, leaving heaps of regret in the hearts of Paul, George, and Ringo.
George Harrison died in 2001 after a battle with lung cancer, aged just 58. The lead guitarist of the Fab Four shared some of his thoughts on his former bandmate in the decades after John's untimely death.
Source: Aaron Curran/liverpoolecho.co.uk
The Beatles broke out regionally in 1963 and nationally in 1964, which makes 1962 the last year they weren't widely known. And given that we'll probably never forget them, that makes it a special year indeed. What was going on then?
During the mid-to-late 1950s, the titans of rock 'n' roll dominated the earth; by 1962, many of them had seemingly gone extinct.
Buddy Holly went down, young. Little Richard found Jesus. Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year-old cousin and was crucified in the press. Chuck Berry spent three years in jail. Elvis, fresh out of the army, was making films often derided as beneath him. So when the Beatles broke out — regionally in 1963, and nationally the following year — they arrived in a barren, joyless world, right?
Source: grammy.com
Paul McCartney said one of the songs from The Beatles’ Revolver is about marijuana. Paul said marijuana expanded his mind.
The song was a hit in the United States but not the United Kingdom.
Paul McCartney revealed one of the songs from The Beatles’ Revolver is about cannabis. Subsequently, the song did not become a hit until years after the Fab Four disbanded. Paul compared writing a song about marijuana to writing a song about chocolate. In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul discussed his relationship with marijuana. “I’d been a rather straight working-class lad, but when we started to get into pot, it seemed to me to be quite uplifting,” he said. “It didn’t seem to have too many side effects like alcohol or some of the other stuff, like pills, which I pretty much kept off.”
Source: cheatsheet.com
George Harrison is most famous for his time with The Beatles. He wrote some of his most classic songs like “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something.” So, you’d think his time in The Beatles would’ve been the first thing he showed his son Dhani. Paul McCartney’s kids were practically born on tour and got to see their father’s music, both in The Beatles and beyond, from an early age.
When Dhani was a kid, he used to tell his friends that his dad “pushed buttons” for a living. He had no idea that those buttons were making hit albums.
“I hung out with my parents. I was always trying to be with the big kids, and the big kids at my house were like (ELO frontman) Jeff Lynne,” Dhani told Daily Mail. “You’d come home and it was like, ‘Bob Dylan’s here.’ It’s hard to get a bit of perspective on, like, ‘How did your school test go today?'”
Source: cheatsheet.com
One in three members of Gen Z is unfamiliar with The Beatles, Queen, and Elvis, according to a new study conducted by Roberts Radio. Roberts surveyed 2,000 UK residents from different generations to see how familiar they were with various artists, and the results are surprising to say the least.
The study found that Gen Zers are less familiar with older artists than one might expect. In addition to one-third of Gen Z not knowing who The Beatles are, the report says that two-thirds are unfamiliar with Aretha Franklin. U2 and The Supremes were also found to be unfamiliar to more than half of the generation, while Pink Floyd, David Bowie, and Prince all hovered around the 50% mark. Queen was just slightly higher at 66.81%, perhaps due in part to the band’s popular biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody.
Source: James Sissler/liveforlivemusic.com
George Harrison needed to do a few things before he asked Jeff Lynne to help him produce Cloud Nine. First, George needed to overlook that he’d once called Lynne a Beatles copycat. Secondly, George needed to get to know Lynne to see if they’d be good songwriting partners.
When those things were out of the way, George knew Lynne started work. The former Beatle enjoyed their collaboration because it made him feel like he was in a band again.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney‘s “My Love” doesn’t sound much like George Harrison’s songs. Despite this, “My Love” and one of George’s songs battled for chart supremacy. Notably, Paul called “My Love” “a bunch of roses” for someone he loved.
During a 2002 interview with Hot Press, Paul contrasted his song “Maybe I’m Amazed” with “My Love.” “Well, y’know, it’s not all roses,” he opined. “As you say, that one [‘Maybe I’m Amazed’] was written early days with [Linda McCartney] and just being so in love and so chuffed at this idea of starting a family.
“If it’s going well, that’s a great, great moment in your life,” he added. “And it was for us. But, yeah, there is a bit of that sort of, ‘Here’s a little disclaimer here,’ I’m not going the whole way here whereas ‘My Love’ is. That’s roses: here’s a bunch of roses for you.”
Source: cheatsheet.com
