Beatles News
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
Before The Beatles split up, the relationship between Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney became extremely frayed. In the early-1970s McCartney was working on releasing his first-ever solo record - an album which was eventually released on April 17, 1970. But before the album, McCartney, hit store shelves, he was asked by the Apple Corps bosses to push it back. The person who told him this news was none other than Starr.
Starr was instructed to go to McCartney's farm and explain to him that he needed to change the release date of his album.
McCartney later recalled: "I was just fed up with that. It was the only time I ever told anyone to GET OUT! It was fairly hostile. But things had got like that by this time.
"It hadn’t actually come to blows, but it was near enough."
Source: Callum Crumlish/express.co.uk
George Harrison would have been “very happy” that relationships between Beatles’ members are cast in a more positive light by a new documentary, his son has said.
The film aims to provide an honest insight into the relationship between the men and their creative process during the January 1969 recording sessions.
Dhani Harrison said his father had always been “bummed out” that this part of the world-famous rock band’s history was associated with negativity.
The documentary, to be released later this month and directed by Peter Jackson, is made entirely from never-before seen footage.
Source: Mike Bedigan/independent.ie
George Harrison didn’t look back on his days a Beatle with complete fondness. George hardly looked back on those days at all, actually. He was proud of most of The Beatles’ work, but that was the past. George primarily lived in the here and the now, and never understood the people who were still caught in the craze of The Beatles years after they disbanded.
George always had a hard time being “Beatle George.” However, the end of his time as a Beatle was the worse for him. To make matters worse, George’s struggle to stay in the band was caught all on camera. The Beatles were filming Let It Be. So, the prying cameras paired with George’s growing tensions with his bandmates grew to a boiling point, and George quit.
No wonder George said the film aggravated him to the point where he could hardly watch it. It was like watching a car crash. But what would he say about Peter Jackson’s upcoming documentary, The Beatles: Get Back?
Source: cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney has admitted that Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back documentary has changed his perception of their split.
The three part film, which is coming to Disney+ later this month, focuses on the making of the band’s penultimate studio album ‘Let It Be’ and showcases their final concert as a band, on London’s Savile Row rooftop, in its entirety.
“I’ll tell you what is really fabulous about it, it shows the four of us having a ball,” McCartney told The Sunday Times after watching the film. “It was so reaffirming for me. That was one of the important things about The Beatles, we could make each other laugh.
He continued: “John and I are in this footage doing ‘Two Of Us’ and, for some reason, we’ve decided to do it like ventriloquists. It’s hilarious. It just proves to me that my main memory of the Beatles was the joy and the skill.”
Source; Damian Jones/nme.com
It's January 1969, and the Beatles are unrecognizable from the wide-eyed mop-tops who appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" just five years prior. Their popularity is unrivalled. They've stopped touring and fame is exacting its price. Now comes a self-imposed stress: they've given themselves three weeks to record 14 songs that they'll play to a live audience, all the while, trailed by cameras. The astonishingly intimate footage was recently extracted from a London vault and placed in the capable hands of filmmaker Peter Jackson. His resulting three-part documentary series, "Get Back," drops Thanksgiving weekend on Disney Plus. It adds considerable light and joy to what was always considered to be the Beatles' darkest period. You might say Jackson took a sad song, and well, you know the rest.
Source: Jon Jon/cbsnews.com
