Beatles News
Let it Be was a divisive project. The original concept was that The Beatles would set up in Twickenham Film studios in January 1969 to write and record a new set of songs. Cameras would film their every move until after only three weeks they would perform these as a live TV concert.
It was, even for them, a ridiculously ambitious plan. As the days wore on it became apparent it wasn’t going to happen. Tensions mounted and eventually the band opted for the famous rooftop performance instead.
Chastened, perhaps, by this experience the Beatles took a break before reconvening back in Abbey Road Studios, to record one more masterpiece. With George Martin back at the helm, normal service was resumed. Abbey Road is many people’s favourite Beatles album.
It was only at this point that it all unravelled. Wildly different views of how their business concerns should be managed, the intrusion of new relationships and differing artist visions became their undoing. John, in particular, wanted out.
Source: Tom Dunne/irishexaminer.com
This Thursday marks the release of the first episode of The Beatles: Get Back on Disney+. The six-hour three-parter features tons of unseen footage and audio of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr during their 1969 recording sessions of their last album Let It Be. A special premiere of the new documentary took place in Hollywood last week attended by friends and family of the Fab Four.
Alongside Stella McCartney and Olivia Harrison, were John’s sons Julian Lennon and Sean Ono Lennon.
Julian’s mother was the Beatle’s first wife Cynthia Powell and Sean’s is his second Yoko Ono.
Now his firstborn has shared his reaction to The Beatles: Get Back with an emotional message on his Instagram.
He wrote: “What an Amazing night, firstly seeing Get Back & then Stella’s Event afterwards…”
Source: George Simpson/express.co.uk
The Beatles: Get Back will show The Beatles like fans have never seen them before. Director Peter Jackson pored over all the footage captured for the film Let It Be and assembled previously unreleased footage into a new three part series. Jackson promised many surprises for Beatles fans, including one moment where George Harrison put his foot down with John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
The personalities of each of The Beatles came through to Jackson as he reviewed the footage. He found Harrison to be the voice of reason.
“George, I love,” Jackson said. “One, he’s the pragmatic one which everyone needs that.”
The Beatles: Get Back shows the band discussing their final concert in the theater ruins in Libya. That concert might have been even more elaborate if Lennon and McCartney had gotten their way. Apparently, Ringo Starr stayed out of it.
Source: cheatsheet.com
If he hadn’t become a musician, Paul McCartney says, he would probably have been an English teacher. He has fond memories of his English teacher, Alan Durband, who studied with FR Leavis and taught the young Paul the value of close reading. When he wrote songs with John Lennon, the chords and melody came first. But the words mattered too. Where the straight-up, irony-free early lyrics wooed their audience through a flurry of pronouns – She Loves You, From Me to You, Please Please Me, etc – the later lyrics aspired to poetry.
Source: Blake Morrison/theguardian.com
If you've been binge-watching the latest Disney Plus releases, you'll want to add another one to your list. Later next week, Disney Plus will release The Beatles: Get Back. The hotly anticipated documentary will stream as a series, with three episodes airing on consecutive days. If you're a Beatles fan, you won't want to miss the unseen footage of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr as they prepare to play their renowned "rooftop concert" at the band's Apple Corps headquarters on London's Savile Row -- the band's last live performance.
Source: Katie Teague/cnet.com
It’s been 41 years since John Lennon was killed, but his incredible music legacy lives on to this day. During his short life, The Beatles legend had a couple of sons with his two wives. In his first marriage to Cynthia Powell, he had Julian Lennon in 1963 and later in 1975 he had Sean Ono Lennon with his second wife Yoko Ono.
Julian and Sean occasionally team up for events that are celebrating their father.
Last year, the brothers recorded a conversation of their memories for a special BBC Radio 2 broadcast marking what would have been John’s 80th birthday.
And now they’ve reunited again for the Los Angeles premiere of The Beatles: Get Back, Peter Jackson’s new Disney+ miniseries.
The pair took a selfie from their seats with Stella McCartney inside the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood.
Source: Eli Pacheco/toysmatrix.com
When the world closed down in March 2020, most of us had to make do with pretending to enjoy video calls with friends or baking bread. Peter Jackson, meanwhile, was busy sifting through a mountain of unseen footage – 60 hours in total – of the Beatles, shot by the director Michael Lindsay-Hogg in 1969.
His four-year project is now finished – “we finally completed it on Friday,” says a relieved-looking Jackson from his home in New Zealand – and the resulting series, The Beatles: Get Back, will be released on Disney+ from 25 November. Originally envisaged as a feature film, Covid uncertainty saw plans revised. It is now three two-hour episodes, using the mass of outtakes from Lindsay-Hogg’s work on what would become Let It Be, the band’s fourth feature film.
Source: Richard Porter/beatlesinlondon.com
The best things in life are free, or so the Beatles sang.
But try telling that to one unsuspecting family who sold an ultra-rare copy of a Fab Four album - for a cool £24,800.
Their copy of the White Album, number 0000002, an original double LP released in the UK in 1968, could even have been owned by one the band themselves.
The family brought their late relative's record collection to Special Auction Services' Dudley valuation day and had no idea one album inside was so rare.
It was then that music specialist David Martin estimated it to be worth between £20,000 and £30,000.
He said: "They emailed me saying they had a collection of Beatles records from a relative who had passed away. I said: 'Great, bring them into our office' and it was a nice collection.
Source: Jordan Reynolds/birminghammail.co.uk
Paul McCartney has spoken about the type of crowd The Beatles resonated with, saying they were always understood by “working people”.
In a new interview with The Guardian about Peter Jackson’s Beatles documentary Get Back, McCartney looked back on the group’s final live performance.
While the Fab Four performed on the roof of 3 Saville Road on January 30, 1969, local businessmen in the streets below were complaining about the disruption they were causing, with one caught on camera saying “it’s a bit of an imposition to absolutely disrupt all the business in this area”.
“There’s always the guy in the bowler hat who hates what you’re doing,” said McCartney of the then-divisive nature of The Beatles.
Source: Ali Shutler/nme.com
The second season of the Amazon Originals podcast Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums debuted today with an episode focusing on The Beatles‘ final studio effort, Let It Be.
The Let It Be episode features new interviews with surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, who share recollections about the making of the album, including the band’s historic final concert on the roof of Apple headquarters in London.
They also address the common perception that the album sessions were fraught with conflicts between the band members that foreshadowed The Beatles’ 1970 breakup.
Also appearing in the podcast are Giles Martin, late Beatles producer George Martin‘s son; Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield; and filmmaker Peter Jackson, director of Get Back: The Beatles, the upcoming Disney+ docuseries focusing on the Let It Be sessions.
Source: 933thedrive.com
