Beatles News
The Beatles were a legendary band, for sure. But even the members of the Fab Four would admit that one of the secrets to their success was groundbreaking producer George Martin. It is not an exaggeration to say that Martin helped define The Beatles’ unique sound.
Martin was long considered the “Fifth Beatle.” The London-born producer had honest opinions about “the boys'” music. This included, of course, the performance of drummer Ringo Starr.
Martin didn’t love The Beatles on his 1st listen
In the first volume of his biography on Martin’s life, Maximum Volume: The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin, The Early Years, 1926–1966, author Kenneth Womack noted the producer’s underwhelmed first assessment of the band. Their manager Brian Epstein had run a demo by Martin who later recalled, “I was not knocked out at all.”
Source: cheatsheet.com
The third part of the equation that would become the Beatles fell into place on Feb. 6, 1958. George Harrison joined the Quarry Men, the John Lennon-led group that Paul McCartney had joined as a second guitarist and singer the previous summer.
Harrison, who was a few weeks shy of his 15th birthday, had known McCartney for about a year. The two were students at the Liverpool Institute and frequently took the same bus to and from school. A friendship blossomed, and the two began jamming together, even after McCartney had moved from Speke to Allerton.
When the Quarry Men – named after the Quarry Bank High School where the band was formed three years earlier – were looking to bring in a third guitarist (they had the idea long before Lynyrd Skynyrd), McCartney suggested his friend. The audition took place, strangely enough, on the top of a double-decker bus. At McCartney's prompt, Harrison took out his guitar and played Bill Justis' R&B instrumental "Raunchy," a No. 2 hit on Sun Records in 1957.
Source: ultimateclassicrock.com
After The Beatles split up in 1970 John Lennon continued making music while living in New York City with his wife, Yoko Ono. Together, the couple released a collection of albums, with their first - John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band - coming out in the same year. The star was no stranger to hanging around in the more popular areas of the city, where he invariably made some friends along the way. During his time in NYC Lennon met Chase, a prominent comedy actor at the time who appeared on the weekly show Saturday Night Live (SNL), as well as some films including Foul Play and National Lampoon's Vacation.
Chase recently spoke to fellow Hollywood star Rob Lowe on his podcast, Literally!, where he discussed Lennon.
He revealed: "I was living on the west side around 71st street or something, close to the Hudson River … [Lennon] and Yoko lived somewhere near there too because I’d see him quite frequently in the little park there, eating something, and that’s where I liked to go to eat.
Source: Callum Crumlish/express.co.uk
During an interview John Lennon revealed one of the songs from The Beatles’ White Album was partially a parody. In addition, he felt there was something ironic about the circumstances in which he wrote the song. Here’s the story behind a classic White Album track.
In the book Lennon Remembers, John tells Jann. S Wenner his last batch of great Beatles songs were written when The Beatles were in India with Hindu guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He cited “I’m So Tired” and “Yer Blues” as some of these songs, revealing they were both realistic songs about him. He said the songs just came to him because he had time to write. Notably, neither of these songs are happy songs, with John longing for death in “Yer Blues.”
“They’re pretty realistic, they were about me,” John said. “They always struck me as – not, what’s the word? Funny… ironic? – that I was writing supposedly in the presence of [a] guru and meditating so many hours a day, writing, ‘I’m So Tired’… songs of such pain such as ‘Yer Blues,’ which I meant.”
Wenner then asked John if “Yer Blues” was a parody of English blues music. “Well a bit,” John said. “I’m a bit self-conscious – we all are a bit self-conscious. And The Beatles are super self-conscious people about parodying Americans, which we do and have done.”
Source: cheatsheet.com
In a CBS News special about Queen Elizabeth II, Sir Paul McCartney, who has met the monarch multiple times, says he would describe her as "down to Earth."
"I think the thing about the Queen is that she's – she's royal, so you look up to her cause she's royal. But she's very down to Earth," the singer-songwriter told "CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King.
McCartney's connection to the queen goes back to when he was a young boy.
"Let's go to Paul McCartney at 10. What happened at 10?" King asked McCartney.
"Because the coronation was approaching, ... there was a competition for all the schools in England you had to write an essay on the monarchy," McCartney said. "And I liked that idea."
Queen Elizabeth's coronation was in June 1953, when she was 27 years old.
McCartney's essay "had the lyrics of a love song, as Paul wrote about 'our lovely young Queen,'" King said.
Source: cbsnews.com
The Beatles‘ album Abbey Road may not have been universally received as a masterpiece at the time of its release but since then, there’s no question it’s one of the greatest rock albums of all time.
One of the album’s tracks, “Sun King,” featured John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison singing in another language. Here’s what Lennon had to say about it.
‘Abbey Road’ was released in 1969
Abbey Road was recorded that year in the midst of The Beatles’ bitter dissolve. In addition to “Sun King,” the album featured what were to become classics: “Come Together,” George Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun,” and the long medley with “Sun King,” “Mean Mr. Mustard,” “Polythene Pam,” “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight” and “The End.”
McCartney told CBS News how the album’s legendary cover image – and its title – came to be.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Plenty of celebrities — and, for that matter, plenty of non-celebrities — go by names other than the ones they were given. Stage names are nothing new, and many entertainers simply pick names that are flashier, easier to remember, or more unique than their given names.
The man born as Krishna Pandit Bhanji wanted a name that didn’t have the (contradictory) religious connotations, and changing his name to Ben Kingsley gave him an immediate boost in Hollywood job opportunities.
Meanwhile, some actors have to change their names to meet Screen Actors Guild requirements. Only one actor with a given name can be registered with the prestigious group, so Michael Andrew Fox became Michael J. Fox and Emily Stone became Emma Stone to avoid duplications.
None of these reasons, however, explain why Paul McCartney goes by a name that isn’t the one he was given.
Source: cheatsheet.com
The Beatles drummer Ringo Starr shared a new video on his official Instagram account today and announced the release of the renewed clip of his reggae-infused song named ‘Waiting For The Tide To Turn.’
As you may already follow Starr’s career that he released his last-ever solo album named ‘What’s My Name’ which features ten never-released before tracks. While the album got mixed reviews from professional reviewers, it also features a song that Paul McCartney sang and played bass guitar at the same time.
After releasing his latest solo album in 2019, he released a couple of new singles from his EP named ‘Zoom In Zoom Out’ EP like ‘Teach Me To Tango,’ Here’s To The Nights’ and ‘Waiting For The Tide To Turn’ in 2021. While the latest single of Ringo was released on his YouTube channel, today, he announced the release of the audio visulated version of the song.
Source: Enes K./metalheadzone.com
When The Beatles officially parted ways, George Harrison couldn’t have been happier. After years of seeing his songs dismissed and/or cut from Fab Four records, he could fill his own LPs with all the tunes he had stockpiled. And George promptly filled the three albums of All Things Must Pass (1970) with those songs.
Yet being on his own didn’t mean Harrison could simply relax and play music. That became apparent when he began dealing with a copyright infringement suit over his debut single, “My Sweet Lord.” That litigation kicked off while “My Sweet Lord” was still on the U.S. charts.
Later that same year, Harrison’s attempt at producing a benefit album brought about more legal headaches. At that point, you could see how the songwriter-performer could write a track titled “Sue Me, Sue You Blues” for Living in the Material World (1973). But the even larger lawsuit involving The Beatles had more to do with it.
Source:cheatsheet.com
They were the shots that were heard around the world … and for a bookish 10-year-old girl in Philadelphia, in the United States, the assassination of John Lennon, in 1980, ignited a passion for The Beatles that would transplant her from stateside to Merseyside.
“Day in, day out, all you would see on TV was thousands of people in floods of tears, and I thought, ‘Who was this guy? He must have been really important,’” Holly Tessler recalls.
“That set me off wondering who The Beatles were. Being a nerd, I went to the library and found a biography and I became fascinated.
“I would come home and say to my parents, ‘Did you know Paul McCartney is left-handed?’ After weeks of endlessly studying trivia, my parents said, ‘Listen to the music, kid.’ So, I did – and that’s what really did it for me.”
Source: Simon Parry /scmp.com
