Beatles News
GEORGE HARRISON divorced his first wife Pattie Boyd in 1977. Just two years later she married guitarist Eric Clapton, one of Harrison's best friends. According to Clapton's biography, the star used voodoo to steal Boyd away from The Beatles singer. Meanwhile, Harrison worked hard on putting the sadness from his divorce into a heartbreaking song on his fifth solo album.
By 1974 George Harrison and his wife Boyd had unofficially separated. Their official divorce came two years later in 1976. The couple first met in 1964 on the set of The Beatles’ first film, A Hard Day’s Night. A prominent photographer at the time, Boyd became famous in her own right as a well-regarded model, who epitomised the fashion industry throughout the 1960s, and into the 1970s. But after years of infidelity on Harrison’s part, Boyd said she couldn’t take any more and left the singer.
The pair’s divorce wasn’t finalised until 1977, long after she had already started a relationship with singer-songwriter Clapton.
Source: Callum Crumlish/express.co.uk
Before John, Paul, George and Ringo became the Beatles, they were simply four teenagers from Liverpool. Never could John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr have imagined they would go on to form one of the most successful groups in modern history, influencing the popular culture in not only music, but also fashion, film and global representation.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, it was difficult to imagine a band hailing from the relatively poor northwest port city of Liverpool, England, could get a gig in the thriving London music scene of the south, let alone export their eventual homegrown success to a world eagerly opening up to the counter-culture movement of the '60s and the burgeoning phenomenon that was called rock 'n' roll.
A fateful meeting between two music-loving teenagers in 1957 is where it all began. Sixteen-year-old rhythm-guitarist Lennon, the son of a merchant seaman, was performing with the Quarrymen, a skiffle (folk music blended with jazz or blues) band booked to perform at events at a church fete in Woolton, Liverpool. While setting up their instruments for the evening performance, the band’s bass player introduced Lennon to a classmate, 15-year-old McCartney, who would join in on a couple of numbers that night and soon would be offered a permanent spot in the Quarrymen.
Source: Colin Bertram/biography.com
The Beatles’ albums are widely considered classics, however, John Lennon wasn’t fond of all of them. In fact, he found some of them downright embarrassing. He said one album marked the point where “something just happened” and The Beatles’ music became a lot different.In 1968, Jonathan Cott of Rolling Stone interviewed John. During the interview, Cott asked John what he felt about The Beatles’ first few albums. “Depends what track it is,” John said. “I was listening to the very first albums a few weeks back, and it’s embarrassing. It was embarrassing then because we wanted to be like this. We knew what we wanted to be, but we didn’t know how to do it, in the studio. We didn’t have the knowledge or experience. But still some of the album is sweet, it’s all right.”
Source: cheatsheet.com
The Beatles took Paris by storm as they played 18 days of concerts in January 1964 at the Olympia Theater.
They stayed at the iconic George V hotel, now a Four Seasons property and the gold standard of luxury in the city since its construction in 1928. The accommodating staff granted a request for a piano in the Beatles' suite, where Paul McCartney began to experiment with some blues phrasing. The result was the first draft of a future hit called "Can't Buy Me Love."
They were on a roll. The Beatles landed their first chart-topping song in America at the end of December 1963 and were on their third in the U.K. with "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." Now, demand for the latest material from McCartney's hit songwriting partnership with John Lennon was at a fever pitch.
At the same time, EMI was determined to make the Beatles happen in as many territories as possible. That's how the Fab Four found themselves in the EMI Pathe Marconi Studios in Paris to record German-language versions of "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand."
When the session wrapped up early, they decided to record the song McCartney had been working on in the hotel, the first version of "Can't Buy Me Love." This marked the first time that a song was written solely by McCartney, despite the continuing Lennon/McCartney credit. "That's Paul's completely," Lennon told David Sheff in All We Are Saying. "Maybe I had something to do with the chorus, but I don't know. I always considered it his song."
Source: ultimateclassicrock.com
Elvis Presley and The Beatles are two of the most famous classic rock acts of all time. However, that doesn’t mean Elvis liked all of The Beatles’ songs. Here’s a look at which Beatles songs the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll liked, which ones he didn’t like, and which ones he performed.
Joe Esposito was Elvis’ friend and road manager. According to Elvis Australia, he opened up about the singer’s feelings on the Fab Four.
“Well, Elvis loved the Beatles’ music,” he said.” I mean, let’s face it, he recorded three of their songs. He just did — ‘Yellow Submarine’ that period of time. He didn’t care for those songs.”
“Yellow Submarine”
Esposito added “Elvis… believed in songs with a lot of good words and meaning with something behind them like ‘Michelle’ and ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Hey Jude’ and those songs. He didn’t care for that period of time. That was a drug time which was ironic. So, those songs he didn’t care about. But he didn’t say anything bad about the Beatles. I mean, there’s always stories about him putting the Beatles down and stuff like that. And we all say different things about different people at different times and really don’t mean. But overall, he respected them.”
Source: cheatsheet.com
The torrid courtship of John Lennon and Yoko Ono was – and still is – one of the most frequently discussed and publicly visible relationships in the history of popular music. 52 years ago today in March 1969, the two were married in characteristically bold and vocal fashion.
The immeasurably famous member of The Beatles and the avant-garde artist and activist began their relationship while Lennon was still married to his now-ex-wife, Cynthia Lennon. After meeting and maintaining correspondence from afar, Lennon invited Ono to come and visit while Cynthia was away in Greece in May 1968. During that visit, the pair spent the night recording what would become their Two Virgins album and, according to the LP’s liner notes, “made love at dawn” to cap the intense all-night session.
John Lennon was thoroughly smitten with Ono after the evening. As Cynthia explained in her 1980 memoir, A Twist of Lennon, when she returned home from her trip, she found Yoko and John in bathrobes drinking tea. Lennon, relaxed, simply said, “Oh, hi.” He had already made the decision to take his life down a new road.
Source: Andrew O'Brien/liveforlivemusic.com
Ringo Starr was relieved to report that the upcoming documentary about the Beatles’ final recording sessions will illustrate the “fun” they had at the time – because he was unhappy that the 1970 version concentrated too much on the bad side of things.
Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back is set to arrive in August, assembled principally from dozens of hours of footage shot at the time but not used in Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s Let It Be, which came out 51 years ago.
“I didn’t feel any joy in the original documentary,” Starr said in a press conference to promote his new EP, Zoom In. “It was all focused on one moment which went down between two of the lads,” he noted, referring to the falling out between Paul McCartney and George Harrison. He added that the celebrated unannounced rooftop concert “was also only about seven to eight minutes long [in Let It Be]. With Peter’s [movie] it’s 43 minutes long! It’s about the music and a lot of joy.”
Source: ultimateclassicrock.com
Ringo Starr has criticised the original 1970 Beatles documentary Let It Be for being “too miserable”.
Director Michael Lindsay-Hogg oversaw the film which documented the band during recording sessions for their 12th studio album and drew particular attention to heated exchanges between Paul McCartney and George Harrison.
Speaking at a Zoom Q&A session this evening (March 18) for his new EP ‘Zoom In’, Starr said he was delighted that the Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson took over 56 hours of footage from that era and made it into the forthcoming The Beatles: Get Back documentary.
“I didn’t feel any joy in the original documentary, it was all focused on one moment which went down between two of the lads [McCartney and Harrison ],” said Starr. “The rooftop concert [unannounced Beatles gig from the Apple Corps rooftop in 1969] was also only about seven to eight minutes long. With Peter’s [documentary] it’s 43 minutes long [laughs]. It’s about the music and a lot of joy.”
Source: Damian Jones/nme.com
Chuck Berry was around for a few years before The Beatles came on the scene. Chuck’s music, along with Buddy Holly and some other rock ‘n’ roll stars, had gone across the pond and started influencing British musicians, including The Beatles.
Sir Paul McCartney, bass player and songwriter of The Beatles, spoke in tribute of Chuck on his death on March 18, 2017.
On his website, Sir Paul commemorated the singer, saying: “From the first minute we heard the great guitar intro to Sweet Little Sixteen we became fans of the great Chuck Berry.
“His stories were more like poems than lyrics – the likes of Johnny B Goode or Maybellene.
“To us, he was a magician making music that was exotic yet normal at the same time.
Source: Jenny Desborough/express.co.uk
Paul McCartney has announced a sequel to his bestselling picture book Hey Grandude!, titled Grandude’s Green Submarine, available for preorder now. Like the first Grandude book, Grandude’s Green Submarine will be illustrated by Kathryn Durst.
The book will continue the adventures of Grandude and his grandchildren as they set out to search for their music-loving grandmother, Nandude. Grandude’s Green Submarine will be published on September 2nd, from Random House Children’s Books in the U.S. and Penguin Random House Children’s U.K.
The original Hey Grandude! was released in September 2019 and quickly became a New York Times #1 bestseller, selling 300,000 copies around the world.
“I’m really happy with how Hey Grandude! was received, as this was a very personal story for me, celebrating Grandudes everywhere and their relationships and adventures with their grandchildren,” McCartney said in a statement. “I love that it has become a book read to grandkids at bedtime all around the world. I always said if people liked the first book and there was an appetite for more, I would write some further adventures for Grandude — so he’s back and this time with his special invention, Grandude’s green submarine!”
Source: Claire Shaffer/rollingstone.com
