Beatles News
The Beatles’ Let It Be jumps back onto the Billboard 200 albums chart (dated October 30), re-entering at No. 5 following its deluxe special edition reissue on October 15.
The set was first released in 1970 as the final studio effort from the band, and also doubled as the soundtrack to the documentary film of the same name. The album spent four weeks atop the Billboard 200 (June 13 – July 4, 1970-dated charts) and is one of a record 19 No.1 albums for the group.
For its special edition, the album was reintroduced in a variety of expanded formats and editions, including many with previously unreleased tracks. All versions of the album, old and new, are combined for tracking and charting purposes.
Source: Sam Armstrong/yahoo.com
If you spot Sir Paul McCartney out and about, don't ask him for an autograph or selfie – the superstar says he's always found them "strange" and would prefer a chat instead.
The Beatles musician has told Reader's Digest he doesn't plan on signing any more autographs for fans or posing for bad-quality photos because he'd rather have a deeper interaction.
He said: "It always struck me as a bit strange – 'here, can I write your name down on the back of this till receipt please?' Why? We both know who I am."
Fans are often keen to pose for selfies with Sir Paul, 79, to keep a memento of having met one of music's biggest stars, but he explained why he wasn't keen on phone photographers either.
Source: Katie Archer/yahoo.com
When George Harrison was in The Beatles, he didn’t get many chances to contribute his own songs. So he stockpiled his tunes and kept them at the ready, waiting for the day he left the band. In 1970, he entered the studio with tons of songs to choose from for his debut solo album, All Things Must Pass. Along with “My Sweet Lord,” there was another heavily religious song on the album, and it has an interesting back story.
In Martin Scorsese’s documentary, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, George says he was brushing his teeth when suddenly this melody came to him.
“I was cleaning my teeth… and suddenly in my head came this ‘You don’t need a dum dada-pmm pa-pmm-pa, you don’t need a bmm papa-bmm.’ All I had to do was pick up the guitar, find what key it was in, and fill in the missing words,” George said about the song, which would later become “Awaiting On You All.”
Source: cheatsheet.com
George Harrison was not a fan of authority. In an interview with the Evening Standard in 1966, the Beatle shared his thoughts on such subjects as the war in Vietnam and religion. There was a common thread in the topics he spoke to: the people in power don’t practice what they preach.
Harrison told writer Maureen Cleave that he thought about the war in Vietnam every day and he thought it was wrong.
“Anything to do with war is wrong,” he said, as recorded in the book George Harrison on George Harrison.
Source: cheatsheet.com
A signed John Lennon drawing created by the late musician during a 1969 visit to Scotland is coming up for auction in Lichfield.
Autographed ‘To Derek Peace + Love John Lennon 1969’, the framed picture is a sketch of the former Beatles member and Yoko Ono in the musician’s caricature style.
Derek was the uncle of owner Frank Massie, who inherited the work from his late father after it had been passed on to him.
The work will go under the hammer at Richard Winterton Auctioneers on 1st November.
Source: lichfieldlive.co.uk
In the foreword to The Lyrics: 1956 to The Present, Paul McCartney says that he’s repeatedly been asked to write his memoirs “but the time has never been right.” As he looked back across his life, though he did not have a diary to refer to, “what I do have is my songs—hundreds of them—which serve much the same purpose.” In 2015, he began meeting with poet Paul Muldoon and going through his recollections about his compositions with the Beatles and as a solo artist. The results are the 154 selections included in this two-volume collection. Here, a look at McCartney’s discussion of 10 of those songs—and a distilled view into his life and creative process.
Source: Alan Light/wsj.com
Every Beatles fan has heard about the upcoming documentary The Beatles: Get Back by now. Directed by Peter Jackson, famous for his work on Lord of the Rings, this project is said to be one of the best films about the band. It shows footage from the recording sessions of their iconic album Let it Be in a way no one has ever seen before, and will come out on Disney + at the end of November 2021.
Fans can be sensitive about things like this, especially considering how many myths have surrounded this legendary band, so to put their minds at ease and to calm the impatience, let's see what the director and the Beatles themselves have said about this documentary.
Source: Val Barone/thethings.com
Who knew that the singers of “Material Girl” and “Living in the Material World” would work on a film together? Just by listening to those two songs, you can understand how different George Harrison and Madonna are. Yet both pop stars were able to have a pretty great working relationship on the film Shanghai Surprise. However, some would say they worked a little too well with one another. In 1986, then-newlyweds Sean Penn and Madonna were cast as love interests, Glendon Wasey and Gloria Tatlock, in Shanghai Surprise. Set in 1938, Shanghai Surprise follows a failed glow-in-the-dark necktie salesman (Penn) as he helps a missionary nurse (Madonna) obtain opium to ease her patient’s pain.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Of all the revelations on the Beatles’ new Let It Be box set, the biggest is the song that didn’t even make the original album. “Don’t Let Me Down” is John Lennon’s raw love ballad to Yoko Ono, much like “Two of Us,” Paul McCartney’s song for Linda. John sounds terrified of the emotional leaps he’s taking, but he leans on the other Beatles to back him up and carry him through the song. You can hear the band develop “Don’t Let Me Down” over the course of the box, until it comes to feel like the whole Beatles story in one song: a map to the long and winding road of their messy, doomed, inescapable friendship.
Source: Rob Sheffield/yahoo.com
Actor and activist Ed Begley, Jr. joined host Kenneth Womack to talk about his decades-long career, Beatles stories, extensive environmental work and more on the Season 3 premiere of "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.
Begley, known for his roles in many popular TV shows and movies, including "St. Elsewhere," "This Is Spinal Tap" and "Better Call Saul," says he first became aware of the Beatles as a boarding school student in 1963. And as a drummer in the marching band (and later a garage rock band), he became "obsessed" with being like Ringo and insisted on getting Ludwig drums.
Source: salon.com
