Beatles News
Before The Beatles went to America and after The Ronettes recorded “Be My Baby,” John Lennon met Ronnie Spector at a party. They instantly clicked. Maybe almost too well. John put the moves on Spector, and she had to deny his advances quickly.
According to People, The Beatles officially met The Ronettes at a show-business party in London. The Ronettes were over the pond for their first U.K. tour. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and more welcomed the trio and made them feel a part of the music scene.
Spector had heard that the Fab Four wanted to be introduced to them. “They had seen us on Sunday Night at the London Palladium and they said, ‘We have got to meet these girls with the black long hair and slits up the side,'” Spector said.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Sir Paul McCartney will join other figures from the world of music in a radio special to pay tribute to Liverpool-born presenter Janice Long.
The BBC has announced plans to celebrate Long with a tribute programme hosted by Zoe Ball and featuring a number of artists, including the former Beatle.
Long, who was born in Liverpool in 1955, became the first woman to have her own daily show on Radio 1 and the first regular female presenter on Top Of The Pops.
She died at home on Christmas Day at the age of 66, following a short illness.
'A Life In Music' will broadcast on Radio 2 on January 23 and feature family, friends and the musicians she helped during her 40-year career in broadcasting.
Sir Paul will discuss his “old Liverpool mate” who was always “a pleasure to meet” and voice his sadness “at the loss of a great Scouse girl”.
Source: Alex Green, PA Senior Entertainment Reporter/liverpoolecho.co.uk
“The Beatles: Get Back” is a feat of modern cinema. Spanning nearly eight hours and chronicling the development of one of the greatest albums of all time, this film pushes fans to reconsider how and why The Beatles broke up.
The footage was pulled from director Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 film, “Let It Be” and its unused recordings. Originally to be released as a TV special, “Let It Be” transformed into a documentary film capturing the development of the Beatles’ twelfth studio album by the same name.
When Jackson began looking through the footage, he stated, “I was thinking, I’d love to make a Beatles film, but I don’t want to make the Beatles-breakup film. That’s the one Beatles movie I would never want to make.” Jackson maintained this mindset throughout the film’s creation.
Source: dukechronicle.com
The Beatles were a British rock band active during the 1960s, and recognized as the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed in the history of popular and rock music. Formed in Liverpool, it was constituted from 1962 by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Rooted in skiffle, beat music, and 1950s rock and roll, their sound would often incorporate elements of classical and traditional pop music, among others, in innovative ways in their songs; the band would later go on to work with a wide range of musical styles, ranging from ballads and Indian music, to psychedelia and even hard rock.
Source: McCartney Times
Full disclosure: I’m more of a Stones guy than a Beatles guy, and some early Beatles (Love Me Do, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and the like) I can find incredibly irritating. Now, sometime around Revolver, I took a turn and most of their albums from then on I like quite a bit. Abbey Road, in particular, I consider to be a stone-cold masterpiece. Although I still think The White Album has way too much filler (Ob-La-Di, Rocky Raccoon, and so forth).
What I’m getting at here is that I didn’t come to Peter Jackson’s seven-plus hour, three-episode series for Disney on bended knee—quite the contrary. I came to Get Back not as a fanboy but as an interested critic.
So, with that preamble out of the way, let me just say, this is a fascinating piece of work. The first part of the initial episode gives the viewer a quick overview of “Beatlemania” before bringing us to what would be the Beatles’ sessions for the recording of their last studio album, Let It Be in 1969 (Abbey Road was actually recorded after Let It Be, but released before).
Source: David Phillips/awardsdaily.com
Watching Peter Jackson’s documentary “The Beatles: Get Back” streaming on Disney+ was a split experience — utterly pedestrian but transplendent and deeply moving.
It was tedious slogging through eight hours of interrupted rehearsal takes, repetitive chit-chat and countless cigarettes, bottles of beer and slices of marmaladed toast consumed in London recording studios during 1969’s opening weeks. Dramatic cinema — and musicmaking — it wasn’t.
Yet thanks to Jackson’s extraordinary digital restoration, along with unfettered access the band gave original director Michael Lindsay-Hogg for an intended behind-the-scenes concert film, the intimate, immediate quality of the three-part miniseries is riveting. It wasn’t just who the four lads were (though they displayed their creative genius even just riffing around) but also when they were, at least for those of us who came of age during their reign.
Source: Allan Ripp/nypost.com
Acclaimed singer-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones joined host Kenneth Womack to talk about her musical roots, having her 10-year-old world rocked by the Beatles, her recent memoir and more on "Everything Fab Four," a podcast co-produced by me and Womack (a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon) and distributed by Salon.
Jones, the two-time Grammy award winner behind the 1979 hit "Chuck E.'s in Love" (which Womack calls "a breath of fresh air"), describes growing up in her family as a "musical incubator." Her grandfather was a successful Vaudevillian performer, and her father and uncles were all musicians who raised her on jazz and popular records in the '50s and '60s. As she tells Womack, being a singer was considered important and "an acceptable job" in her household, with her mother even encouraging her to follow that dream.
Source: salon.com
Paul McCartney never wrote an autobiography. He argued that his remarkable life story is “all in the songs” — the hundreds upon hundreds of timeless, instantly engrossing classics that have become the soundtrack to Western culture.One hundred and fifty-four of these musical gems are gathered in The Lyrics — a gripping commentary on the inspiration for the tunes, their making and the characters they portray. From boyhood creations such as “I lost my girl” written at the tender age of 14 following the untimely death of his mother, to “Penny Lane”, “Yesterday”, “A Day In A Life”, “Let It Be”, “Hey Jude”, “Back In The USSR”, “The Long And Winding Road” and “Mull of Kintyre” among many iconic others.
Source: Hannah Gal/thecritic.co.uk
George Harrison had a lot of support from his family, especially his sister Louise when he joined The Beatles. His mother (also Louise) was his No. 1 fan. She answered fan mail, invited some of her son’s loyal fans to tea, and even became pen pals with one of them.
Initially, George’s father was less-than-enthusiastic about his son quitting his job to become a full-time musician. Yet, he was just as much involved with George’s fans as his wife.
However, George’s sister had an even bigger job; helping her little brother reach stardom.
In 1963, The Beatles decided to take a holiday. John Lennon took his wife Cynthia to Paris, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr went to Greece, and George visited his sister in America. On Sept. 16, George flew to the States with his older brother, Peter, becoming the first Beatle to do so.
Louise ‘Lou’ Caldwell lived at 113 McCann Street in Benton, Illinois, at the time. Louise had recently immigrated there with her husband Gordon, a nearby coal mine engineer. Benton, Illinois, is a small town, but George welcomed the quiet after experiencing the first waves of Beatlemania. No one recognized him, and he could experience some American staples without hassle.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson's acclaimed documentary series The Beatles: Get Back is getting a Blu-ray release.
The three-part series on Disney+ has become a phenomenon with fans with its three-part documentation of the final days of The Beatles as they recorded their Let it Be album.
If you don't have Disney+ (you should get it!) or simply want to add the Blu-ray to your collection, Zavvi will be releasing The Beatles: Get Back on home video on February 28, 2022 for the special price of £29.99.
Source: Justin Harp/digitalspy.com
