Beatles News
When people think of the Beatles, the first thing that comes to mind is not their drug use, at least for most people. When compared to some of their wilder contemporaries, the Fabs feel somewhat innocent. But that certainly doesn’t mean the band didn’t partake from time to time.
They famously entered into a psychedelic era in the mid-’60s, fueled by LSD and other hallucinogens. They were also not strangers to marijuana. The Beatles’ post-introduction to drugs was markedly more experimental in the studio. Like many of their contemporaries, drugs provided a creative spark. There was one studio session wherein John Lennon accidentally took drugs, luckily leading to one of the Beatles’ best psychedelic songs.
When we think of the Beatles and drugs, it’s hard for the mind not to immediately go to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Although we don’t have the statistics, this feels like the Beatles’ “highest” album. That’s likely due to the inclusion of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”–which Lennon swore up and down wasn’t about LSD…However, there is another song that rivals “Lucy” in terms of drug use: “Getting Better.”
John Lennon was in the habit of taking “uppers” in the studio to deal with the long nights. On this particular occasion, Lennon accidentally took a massive dose of LSD instead of his usual fare. It made him noticeably off-kilter in the session.
“We were overdubbing voices on one of the Pepper tracks, and John, down in the studio, was obviously feeling unwell,” George Martin once recalled. “I called over the intercom, ‘What’s the matter, John? Aren’t you feeling very well?’”
“It wasn’t until much later that I learned what had happened,” he continued. “John was in the habit of taking pills, ‘uppers’, to give him the energy to get through the night. That evening, he had taken the wrong pill by mistake – a very large dose of LSD.”
Staying true to his songwriting partner, Paul McCartney decided to join in on the LSD trip, if only so Lennon wouldn’t be alone.
“But Paul knew, and went home with him and turned on as well, to keep him company,” he added. “It seems they had a real trip. I knew they smoked pot, and I knew they took pills, but in my innocence I had no idea they were also into LSD.”
The Beatles and Their Extracurricular Activities
The Beatles haven’t been shy about their drug use. They have been as forthright about their wild years as any of their peers.
Lennon’s LSD-inspired “Lucy” is perhaps their most famous drug-fuelled track, but it certainly doesn’t stop there. There’s “With a Little Help From My Friends” (with its references to getting high). Elsewhere, they penned a love letter to pot with “Got to Get You Into My Life.”
Despite their experimentation with drugs, their journey never took them too far into the heavy stuff. At least, McCartney said heroin and the like weren’t for him.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Alex Hopper
“Yesterday” by The Beatles is a musical blank canvas, open to interpretation, reinvention, and—sometimes—utter reinvention in genres the Fab Four never saw coming. With over 2,000 known versions out there, here are 10 of the most genre-bending, mood-swinging, mind-tilting covers of “Yesterday” you never knew you needed… until now.
1. Marvin Gaye (1970)
Motown’s smoothest operator took “Yesterday” and wrapped it in satin. His version, from That’s the Way Love Is, lives in a warm, soulful haze—like heartbreak at sunset, with a bassline for a hug.
2. Molly Hatchet (2012)
Southern rock titans Molly Hatchet brought muscle and denim to “Yesterday” on Regrinding the Axes. Imagine a bar fight breaking out in the middle of a memory—that’s how hard this one hits.
3. En Vogue (1992)
If ’60s harmonies got a ’90s R&B glow-up, this is it. En Vogue’s a cappella spin on “Yesterday” doesn’t just cover it—it serenades it with perfect pitch and powerhouse soul.
4. La Lupe (1967)
Known as the Queen of Latin Soul, La Lupe’s fiery version on El Rey y Yo turns “Yesterday” into a dramatic, Havana-flavored rollercoaster. Sad? Maybe. Subtle? Absolutely not.
5. Boyz II Men (1994)
No instruments. No frills. Just four voices, blending like butter. Boyz II Men closed their blockbuster album with an a cappella version that somehow made “Yesterday” feel even more eternal.
6. Count Basie & His Orchestra (1966)
Big band meets Beatle ballad. The Count swung “Yesterday” like it was born for the dance floor, with Bill Henderson on vocals and the horns adding a Gatsby touch to Lennon & McCartney’s melancholy.
7. Dr. John (1975)
Recorded in a studio disguised as a nightclub, Dr. John’s version smokes with New Orleans swagger. It’s voodoo blues for a Sunday hangover, dressed in feathers and funk.
8. Sarah Vaughan (1966)
One of jazz’s greatest voices opened her Pop Artistry album with “Yesterday,” turning it into a smoky lounge confession that sounds like she wrote it herself in another lifetime.
9. Ras Attitude (2013)
Reggae meets Liverpool. Ras Attitude’s take on a tribute compilation gives “Yesterday” an island heartbeat, proving heartbreak feels a little better with a skank rhythm underneath it.
10. Cathy Berberian (1967)
Opera diva meets Beatlemania. Berberian turned “Yesterday” into an avant-garde aria, complete with vibrato and theatrical drama. It’s not background music—it’s a front-row ticket to surrealism.
Source: thatericalper.com/Eric Alper
When The Beatles broke up, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr all seemed a bit adrift for their first few years as ex-members of The Fab Four. Only George Harrison seemed to be thriving on his own, at least in terms of his career choices.
Maybe that’s because Harrison no longer had to answer to his bandmates when it came down to the material he wanted to present. If he wanted to go the spiritual route, as he did on the 1970 track “Hear Me Lord”, there was no one to stop him. The final year or so of The Beatles as a group was a particularly unhappy time for the four members in terms of their interactions. In one notorious example, George Harrison clashed with Paul McCartney while cameras were rolling in January 1969 on a documentary about the group’s new record.
Earlier that fateful day, Harrison had tried to interest the other members in a new track of his called “Hear Me Lord”. Unfortunately, like so many other Harrison compositions of that era, The Beatles couldn’t be bothered to do much with it. Harrison added it to his stockpile of unrecorded songs. He would unleash that stockpile upon the world as part of the triple album All Things Must Pass in 1970.
As was the case throughout the album, producer Phil Spector preferred a maximalist approach on “Hear Me Lord”. He threw multiple instrumentalists in the mix, including three guitarists, two bassists, three keyboardists, and two horn players. In addition, he multitracked Harrison’s vocals to add to the effect.
But what stands out most about the track is how forcefully Harrison voices his passion. Several of his songs with The Beatles touched on spirituality, but never so overtly. On his own to put forth whatever message he wished, Harrison dove into a direct conversation with a higher power on “Hear Me Lord”, a track that essentially closes out the sung part of All Things Must Pass. (The final album mostly features instrumental jam sessions.) Examining the Lyrics of “Hear Me Lord”
“Hear Me Lord” is essentially an earnest prayer, albeit one tinged with Harrison’s clever wordplay. He begins by admitting his folly. “Forgive me Lord,” he sings. “Please, those years that I ignored you.” Then he suggests that others see commitment to God as a price they have to pay. “Forgive them Lord / Those that feel they can’t afford you.”
Source: americansongwriter.com/Jim Beviglia
Beatles history is full of stories about Paul McCartney’s dual life as a bassist and guitarist. After getting saddled with the instrument when Stuart Sutcliffe left the group in July 1961, McCartney didn’t play guitar with the Beatles again until 1965’s Help! album. In addition to performing acoustic guitar on the album cut “Yesterday,” he took electric guitar solos on the songs “Another Girl,” “The Night Before” and “Ticket to Ride.” It was quite a shift for McCartney, considering he’d originally been put off playing lead guitar after his first attempt to do so onstage became a disaster.
In fact, it was that very episode of stage fright that resulted in George Harrison joining the group, at McCartney’s suggestion, seeing as neither he nor John Lennon had any facility for playing lead. Paul’s inability is ultimately what got him stuck playing bass, as Lennon had no ability to play the instrument and Harrison was too vital as a lead guitarist.
Of course, once McCartney began to solo, it was hard to stop him. He took solo sports on Harrison’s Revolver cut “Taxman,” when Harrison was unable to come up with anything satisfactory, and he soloed again on tracks like Sgt. Pepper’s’ “Good Morning Good Morning” and the White Album’s “Helter Skelter.”
What’s less known is that Harrison had a similar fluidity when it came to his guitar skills. Just as McCartney moved between bass and guitar, Harrison filled in for McCartney on bass on several recordings when Paul was playing another instrument or — in the case of one song — when he walked out of the session in anger.
It’s like a lunatic playing. I’m doing exactly what I do on the guitar.”
— George Harrison
Harrison is credited with playing bass in 1969 on Abbey Road’s “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and the medley “Golden Slumbers” and “Carry That Weight,” while McCartney was tickling the ivories. As he recalled in a 1987 interview with Creem magazine, he also played bass on his song “Old Brown Shoe.”
“It’s like a lunatic playing,” Harrison said, to which the interviewer replied, “It sounds like McCartney was going nuts again.” George replied that he was playing bass. “I’m doing exactly what I do on the guitar.”
Old Brown Shoe (Remastered 2009) - YouTube Old Brown Shoe (Remastered 2009) - YouTube
Watch On Well before those recordings, Harrison was beginning to pick up the low end on the Revolver album. It’s widely thought he plays bass on McCartney’s “Good Day Sunshine.” Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn said the piano, bass and drums are all recorded on one track. If McCartney played piano, as is assumed, that leaves only Harrison to play bass.
Source: guitarplayer.com/Elizabeth Swann
Every so often, Paul McCartney and John Lennon would conjure up a Beatles song specifically for Ringo Starr to sing. And as one would expect from songs written for the least singing member of the band, some were better than others (both in chart performance and the general opinion of the rest of the band).
One of the first songs Lennon wrote for Starr was left on the cutting room floor, although the musicians would mention the song in later interviews. To Lennon, it was hilarious. To George Harrison, the throwaway song was just plain weird.
John Lennon Wrote This Beatles Song For Ringo Starr
Although the Beatles originally intended for Ringo Starr to sing John Lennon’s song, “If You’ve Got Trouble,” on the 1965 album Help!, the band decided to scrap the song. From the lyrics to the melody to Starr’s humble performance, the Beatles ultimately left the song in the EMI Studios vault. During a 1965 interview with Melody Maker, Lennon described the song as hilarious.
“It’s the funniest thing I’ve ever done,” Lennon laughed. “I didn’t expect anybody to want to record it.” Guitarist George Harrison had an even blunter take. “It’s the most weird song,” he later said, per Anthology. “It’s got stupid words and is the naffest song. No wonder it didn’t make it onto anything.”
Source: Melanie Davis/americansongwriter.com
“‘There’s a Place’ was my attempt at a sort of Motown, black thing.
It says the usual Lennon things: ‘In my mind there’s no sorrow…’ It’s all in your mind.”
“There’s A Place” – the very first song recorded during the 11 February 1963 Please Please Me EMI session – was exceptional for its day (and for ours). As Wilfrid Mellers later pointed out in Twilight of the Gods, it was the first Beatles song about self-reliance. It established songwriter John Lennon’s recurring theme of “finding comfort in his thoughts, dreams, and memories…[dealing] with life’s sorrow by retreating into the safety of his inner thoughts…”, a significant theme Lennon would repeat in “later songs such as ‘Strawberry Fields Forever,’ ‘Girl,’ ‘In My Life,’ ‘Rain,’ ‘I’m Only Sleeping,’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’.” No “moon, June, croon, spoon” song, “There’s a Place” introduces a more sophisticated scenario.
McCartney supplied the inspiration for this song: the Leonard Bernstein/Stephen Sondheim tune “Somewhere,” a song that Paul had heard in West Side Story. And, of course, it took the brilliant work of Paul, George, and Ringo to bring this very personal song, “penned by John,” to life. Under the auspices of Producer George Martin, Engineer Norman Smith, and Second Engineer Richard Langham, “There’s A Place” was recorded in 13 takes.
It required 10 takes to achieve a satisfactory backing track (takes 3, 5, and 7 being incomplete). Take 10 was deemed “best” – with John on his 1958 Rickenbacker 325 Capri Electric guitar, Paul on his 1961 Hofner 550/1 bass, George on his 1957 Gretsch G6128 Duo Jet, and Ringo on his 1060 Premier 58 Mahogany Duroplastic drum kit. John sang the melody line lead vocal, in the tradition of The Beatles (permitting a composer to sing lead on his own song). Paul accompanied and at times harmonized with high harmony. Paul did not sing important solo lines such as “when I’m alone,” “only you,” “In my mind, there’s no sorrow,” and “There’ll be no sad tomorrows.” Harrison also supplied harmony. One of the superimpositions performed in Takes 11-13 was the addition of John’s wailing, poignant harmonica.
Source: culturesonar.com/Jude Southerland Kessler
It felt like any other summer day in Liverpool, but a chance encounter turned into one of the most notable days in music history: the day John Lennon first met Paul McCartney. On July 6, 1957, St. Peter’s Church in Woolton Village was having a church party, where The Quarrymen — Lennon’s skiffle band at the time — played.
“Apparently, we were on stage playing the Del-Vikings doo-wop number 'Come Go With Me,’ and Paul arrived on his bicycle and saw us playing,” Rod Davis of The Quarrymen recalled to Billboard. “It was somebody we didn’t know, Paul, who met someone we did know. It wasn’t a big deal. You explain this to people, particularly Americans, and they expect there to be angels hiding behind clouds blowing trumpets. It’s all terribly, terribly a non-event — except in hindsight.”
During the meeting, mutual friend Ivan Vaughan introduced the two — and McCartney joined the band a few months later. While they eventually changed the direction of their sound to rock ‘n’ roll — and their name to The Beatles — what made their eventually success so sweet was the tight friendship between Lennon and McCartney, the songwriters of the group.
While their likemindedness for music brought them together, their connection grew out of a shared sense of tragedy. McCartney had lost his mother, Mary, from breast cancer in October 1956 when he was 14 and Lennon’s mother, Julia, was killed by a speeding car in July 1958 when he was 17.
“We had a kind of bond that we both knew about that, we knew that feeling,” McCartney told The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in September 2019. “I never thought that it affected my music until years later. I certainly didn’t mean it to be. But it could be, you know those things can happen.”
Source: biography.com
Creator Phil Rosenthal remembered star Peter Boyle, who died in 2006. Rosenthal told the audience a little-known fact that John Lennon was the best man at Boyle’s wedding to his wife, Loraine Alterman, a journalist
Everybody Loves Raymond probably doesn’t make you think of The Beatles, but it just might now.
On Monday, June 16, at the Paley Center in New York City, Everybody Loves Raymond stars Ray Romano, Patricia Heaton and Maggie Wheeler, creator Phil Rosenthal and producer Tom Caltabiano reunited to celebrate 30 years of the hit sitcom. The comedy series, which also starred Brad Garrett and the late Peter Boyle and Doris Roberts, ran from 1996 to 2005 and continues to find new fans in syndication. Romano, 67, starred as sportswriter Ray Barone, and the characters around him were loosely based on his real family.
During the panel, the group took time to remember Boyle, who died in 2006 at 71. Boyle played Ray’s dad, Frank, who could be extremely stubborn and over-the-top with his sons. Coexecutive producer and writer Cindy Chupack remembered how she based a plotline for Frank on her own dad, who was a “terrible driver,” and she said Boyle was “so belligerent” in how he portrayed Frank.
Ray Romano (left) and Peter Boyle in 'Everybody Loves Raymond'.
Rosenthal — who also stars in Netflix’s Somebody Feed Phil — chimed in. “Two interesting things about Peter Boyle,” he said. “He studied to be a monk when he was younger. I asked him, ‘Why'd you give it up?' And he says, ‘There weren't enough girls there.’ ”
“And the other thing is, I wonder if you know this. You know who the best man at his wedding was? John Lennon,” Rosenthal revealed. “He was cool, Peter Boyle.”
Boyle met his wife, Loraine Alterman, on the set of Young Frankenstein. Boyle played the Monster in the now-legendary Mel Brooks film. Alterman was a journalist for Rolling Stone who was visiting the set for work. It was widely reported that Boyle was still wearing his monster makeup when he asked her out, but Alterman told The New York Times in 2001 that Boyle had exaggerated the truth. ''He actually was out of makeup when we met, but let him have it his way,” she told the outlet.
Alterman, who worked widely as a music writer at the time, was friends with Yoko Ono, and through her, Boyle became friends with Lennon. Boyle and Alterman wed in 1977 with Ono and Lennon by their sides.
“My wife and I had a very low-key wedding,” Boyle told Philadelphia magazine in 2005. “At the last minute, I asked John to stand in as my best man. And he said yes. The rest is history.” He noted Lennon didn’t sing, but added, “He is John Lennon. And everything he does is memorable.”
Source: people.com/Victoria Edel
Even casual fans are familiar with the Beatles' album-opening songs.
Three of them went to No. 1, either in the U.K. or America, including 1964's "A Hard Day's Night," 1965's "Help!" and 1969's "Come Together." "I Saw Her Standing There" hit No. 1 in three other countries in 1963.
Tracks that were never issued as singles – 1965's "Drive My Car," 1966's "Taxman," 1967's "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band/With a Little Help From My Friends" and "Magical Mystery Tour," and 1968's "Back in the U.S.S.R." – have also become broadly familiar through radio and soundtrack spins.
Yet some lesser-known items still appear on the following list of Beatles Opening Songs Ranked From Worst to Best. "No Reply" quickly disappeared as a single in 1964, for instance, but has continued to grow in critical estimation. "Two of Us," from 1970's Let It Be, remains one of their late era's most congenial gems.
Which one's best? Here's a ranked look back at the songs that began every album by the Beatles:
No. 12. "It Won't Be Long"
From: With the Beatles (1963)
"Please Please Me" rose to No. 2 in the U.K. and then "She Loves You" topped the charts. So they stuck with the formula: Pairing "be long" and "belong" echoed their first hit's two-meaning title, and the Beatles' exhilarating "yeahs" remained from the second. John Lennon said as much in David Sheff's All We Are Saying. "It was my attempt at writing another single," Lennon admitted. "It never quite made it."
No. 11. "Magical Mystery Tour"
From: Magical Mystery Tour (1967)
Sessions for this album-opener began just as Sgt. Pepper's was to be released, and the results feel very much like a photocopy. Paul McCartney had another Big Concept and another scene-setting but rather flimsy introductory song. The strange accompanying film flopped, but the soundtrack was far better than its first track. Magical Mystery Tour would become a chart-topping six-times platinum album in the U.S.
Source: ultimateclassicrock.com/Nick DeRiso
After seven decades of writing iconic songs and performing for millions around the globe, fans rallied around McCartney on his special day.
Paul McCartney celebrates his 83rd birthday on June 18, and after more than seven decades of writing iconic songs and performing for millions across the globe, he's showing no signs of slowing down. But as the music legend marks another milestone, fans are rallying around one shared fear. With heartfelt messages pouring in, one thing is clear: the world isn't ready to say goodbye to Sir Paul just yet.
Fans of The Beatles legend took to Reddit to share their best birthday wishes. Most shared their hopes that the musician wouldn't consider retiring anytime soon.
One fan wrote, "I hope that I'll still be able to do three-hour concerts when I'm in my eighties." A second penned, "Long live Sir Paul McCartney!"
"Please don't ever retire, the world needs you. Happy birthday to you," a third fan exclaimed." A fourth admirer added, "Happy Birthday, Paul. Hope you have a wonderful day. May you be blessed with many more healthy and happy years. Keep making music, love you."
Source: Lucille Barilla/parade.com
