Beatles News
I suspect that no one—truly, no one—could have imagined the success of the new Beatles documentary, “Get Back,” the director Peter Jackson’s recut of the footage shot in January of 1969 that produced the dim documentary “Let It Be.” After having taken on the task of reshaping our entire conception of the First World War in his previous “updated” documentary, “They Shall Not Grow Old,” Jackson has now taken on the harder task of reconstructing our view of Paul’s quarrel with George over the guitar riffs in “Two of Us.” Even so: nearly eight hours of guys making desultory passes at old songs, painfully constructing new ones through hours of repetition and the testing of tentative lyrics—“Is Tucson in Arizona?” John checks with Paul as they write “Get Back”—all the while mildly bickering and talking past one another in a family broth of warm memories and clouded quarrels? Really? Only the remaining coterie of grizzled Beatles fans, surely, would respond. But the documentary works and, apparently, has been an astonishing success both in the numbers of people who have watched it and the number of responses it has provoked.
Source: Adam Gopnik/newyorker.com
On Aug. 31, 1998, Variety reported that New Zealand filmmakers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh would transform J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy of books into three films. Reporter Benedict Carver added that the books are “a highly prized literary property that has eluded filmmakers for years.”
It was the culmination more than three decades of trying to adapt Tolkien’s work for the screen, after the world of visual effects had finally caught up to the British author’s fantastical storylines.
But three decades before, the Beatles had tried to get a “Lord of the Rings” film off the ground. After playing themselves in “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help!,” the Fab Four was ready to play fictional characters. Apple Films executive Denis O’Dell spearheaded the hunt for material, and Lennon reportedly loved the idea of “Rings.” Lennon would play Gollum, Paul McCartney would play Frodo, George Harrison would be Gandalf and Ringo Starr would play Sam.
Source: Tim Gray/variety.com
The Beatles were only together for eight years. And yet here we are a half century after they split up and they are still with us, as powerful a presence as they ever were. Thanks to the new three-part Disney+ docuseries The Beatles: Get Back, we are in the midst of a new round of Beatlemania. And it’s thrilling.
If you haven’t had a chance to watch all eight hours of Get Back yet, we urge you to immediately. It’s a fantastic reminder of how the greatest of all rock ’n’ roll bands worked together in the studio and of the bonds that tied them together — and occasionally drove them apart. And to complete your own Beatlemania, check out 11 more films with or about the Fab Four.
Source: Chris Nashawaty/aarp.org
Over the five decades since the Beatles decided to record an album live in the studio with a camera crew filming the sessions, the story has settled into pop history as a xgrim fable of eroding male bonds, erupting egos, and dissipating creative chemistry. As veteran Beatles chronicler Mark Lewisohn described the events in his book The Beatles Recording Sessions, they represented “the most confusing and frustrating period in the Beatles’ entire career.” Longtime Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick, in his memoir Here, There and Everywhere, described the time as “torturous and fraught with tension.” Among the Beatles themselves, George Harrison, in an interview, cast the 1969 recording sessions as “the low of all time,” and John Lennon remembered them as “the most miserable sessions on Earth.”
Source: David Hajdu/thenation.com
George Harrison loved hanging out with his friends. Being close to them meant he was closer to God. George would turn up to their houses late at night, expecting jam sessions, which they could never turn down because they loved him just as much. So, if they all liked jamming and hanging out together, why not establish one of the world’s biggest supergroups?
The product was the Traveling Wilburys; the band Rolling Stone called the supergroup to end all supergroups. George was the founder and leader, but he and the rest of his bandmates, including Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Bob Dylan, treated each other as equals. They checked their egos at the door and let the band roam wherever it wanted.
Source: cheatsheet.com
What else is left to say or write about The Beatles? Peter Jackson's newly released and highly praised documentary The Beatles: Get Back shows that, half a century after their break up, the Fab Four still have a hold on our culture and command our attention.
Beyond indulgent retromania, The Beatles are heroic figures. Musical innovators, cultural icons, even messianic avatars, their mythology lends itself to repeated appreciation and interpretation, forever gaining in power, mystery and enchantment.
Beatlemania is best understood as a religious phenomenon, more than a musical one. Through their unique alchemy of artistic gifts and existential tensions, cosmic sensitivity, humor, and a flair for the surreal, these four showmen-shamans cast a bewitching multimedia magic spell that saturated the global mediascape of the 60s and still reverberate today in the collective imagination. Astonishingly, given their stellar and prolific career, no one in the band was yet 30 years old when they broke up in 1970.
Source: Ferdinando Buscema/boingboing.net
THE BEATLES were a collaborative team but they didn't always agree on everything. One instance saw Paul McCartney take one of George Harrison's guitar solo's, however it ended up being something he was pleased about in the end.
No fan of The Beatles will ever forget the legendary Let It Be documentary that showed Paul McCartney and George Harrison falling out over a guitar solo on Two Of Us. Years prior, quite the opposite happened between the two members of the Fab Four on Taxman.
The Beatles' track Taxman was included on their seventh studio album, Revolver.
The track was written and performed by Harrison - one of the few tracks he was granted control over during the band's career.
However, he just could not find a way to finish the song off perfectly. He felt it needed a solo but couldn't come up with anything.
Source: Callum Crumlish/express.co.uk
The Beatles rose from humble beginnings in Liverpool and lived, with the possible exception of John Lennon, in modest homes.
But today it is a very different story. Liverpool now has the fastest rising house prices of any UK city - and that's even before taking into consideration the association of these particular houses with four of the most famous men in the world.
It means the value of many of these properties are undoubtedly far above the local average price, due to the "star value" and historical significance of these buildings.
For this reason, whenever any property associated with the The Beatles' childhoods comes on the market, it attracts worldwide interest.
While some of these first homes have seen been demolished or repurposed, plenty are still normal residential homes, offering house hunters the opportunity to live in a piece of history - or just make a canny investment, as the value of these properties can only increase.
Source: Alan Weston/liverpoolecho.co.uk
The teenage police officer who silenced The Beatles' last ever live gig has said he has no regrets about shutting down the rooftop concert in 1969, but admitted his threat to arrest the band for playing music too loudly was a 'bluff'.
Ray Dagg, a former London Metropolitan Police constable and now 72, was the 19-year-old responding to noise complaints made by neighbours on January 30, 1969.
John, Paul, George and Ringo were performing their last gig, a 42-minute set that included hits Get Back, Don’t Let Me Down and I Got a Feeling, on the roof of The Beatles’ Apple Records headquarters at 3 Savile Row in London.
Source: Jonathan Rose/dailymail.co.uk
George Harrison often had a hard time working with the two of the greatest songwriters. Since John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and the group’s producer, George Martin, hardly gave him the time of day and let him come forward with his songs, George kept most of them to himself. Meanwhile, he tried as hard as possible to help them form their tunes into hits. During an interview with Guitar World, George explained what it was like working with John in the studio. He said John had a hard time figuring out what he wanted to say most of the time.
Source: cheatsheet.com
