Beatles News
Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles got to know each other from the start of Hendrix’s solo career. During Hendrix’s first months in London, John Lennon and Paul McCartney began turning up backstage at the small clubs where Hendrix’s Experience started playing in late ’66.
In Hendrix: Setting the Record Straight (1992), Hendrix manager Chas Chandler spoke about that welcome support for the band. “We got a tremendous amount of help from people like Mick Jagger, Paul, McCartney, and John Lennon,” Chandler said. “They would rave about Hendrix.”
Indeed, the Beatles connection directly led to Hendrix’s appearance at Monterey Pop, which represented his big break in America. McCartney personally recommended Hendrix to festival organizers, and they took the Beatle’s word when they booked the Experience.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Hitmaking producer David Foster was once fired from working on a Ringo Starr album.
Foster joined the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Rod Stewart, Alicia Keys, John Legend, and Dionne Warwick for the all-star celebration, which Davis used to highlight what he considered to be the top live performances from over the years.
After playing a clip of The Beatles in concert, Davis welcomed Foster to the party as the multi-Grammy winner recalled his experiences of working with Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo on their solo projects decades ago.
However, he admitted his stint with Ringo didn't last long, as he was promptly dismissed by producer Richard Perry.
"Richard fired me from the album. He didn't like the way I played," Foster shared. "It was a great 'a-ha' moment where you take it in and say, 'I can do better' or you fold and go home."
Source: msn.com
ON January 30, 1969 The Beatles appeared on the terrace of the office building of Apple, their record label, at number 3, Savile Row, in the heart of London (Photo: Apple Records)
They hadn’t played live in three years. The last recital of The Beatles had been on August 29, 1966 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, in the United States. Despite its immense popularity, due to organizational failures they had only sold 25 thousand tickets in a place with a capacity for 42,500 people. His most recent album was the stupendous Revolver, the gateway to psychedelia, which later became the wonderful Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band. The show lasted less than 35 minutes and they played just 11 songs, but none of the album they had just recorded: they opened with Rock and roll music, they closed with Long tall Sally and they took 65% of the profits …
Source: thenewstrace.com/Kim Diaz
Whether you frequent their music or not, everyone knows who the Beatles are. If you don’t, you must be living under a very large rock. The Fab Four, composed of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, were only a band for a decade (1960-1970), but during that time, they made their mark on the music world. The British quartet have since influenced generations of musicians and music fans, especially those in America.
As most fans know, the Beatles first performed live in America on the Ed Sullivan show in New York on Feb. 9, 1964. But that wasn’t the first time a Beatle had played music in the states. Beatlemania in America began with George Harrison when he visited a small town in Illinois, long before his three other bandmates arrived.
In September 1963, the Beatles had just completed a tour in the UK and Scotland and their two albums “Please Please Me” and “With the Beatles,” and were ready to take a vacation. McCartney and Starr visited Greece. Lennon and his wife went to Paris. Harrison, who was 20 at the time, decided to visit his sister Louise in her small town of Benton, a mining community in Southern Illinois.
Source: Noah Nelson/dailyillini.com
Before the Beatles hit it big, they put in a tremendous amount of hard work.
A lot of it came in Hamburg, West Germany prior to reunification, where they played in the ‘60s. They played exhaustively, set after set, day after day and night after night. This was just 15 years or so after the end of World War II remember, and while young people had put it behind them, there were a lot of reminders of the war. There were plenty of veterans with amputations around, still fairly young themselves, and many former members of the Nazi party walked by them every day.
Talk about a bizarre environment.
But it made them an incredibly tight band and helped catapult them to enduring global fame. They were also the first great rock n roll group to ascend to international stardom that wasn’t American.
Source: JD King/dukebasketballreport.com
Nirvana took hold of the 1990s with their iconic grunge-style music, and with the release of their incredible albums Nevermind and In Utero. Singer and songwriter for the band, Cobain, was a massive fan of The Beatles, and was brutal about how he felt about each of the members’ songwriting styles.
Speaking in an interview in 1993, Cobain confessed: “John Lennon was definitely my favourite Beatle, hands down.
“I don’t know who wrote what parts of what Beatles songs, but Paul McCartney embarrasses me.”
The 26-year-old at the time added: “Lennon was obviously disturbed [laughs]. So I could relate to that.”
He also explained how he learned a lot about The Beatles’ lives from reading about their lives growing up.
Source: Callum Crumlish/express.co.uk
Rare guitars used by musicians including George Harrison, Bono and Tom Petty are going under the hammer for charity.
Hundreds of items from the famed instrument manufacturer Gretsch’s archives will be up for auction for the first time, including prototypes played by leading industry figures. All funds from the Julien’s Auction sale will go towards the Gretsch Foundation.
Highlights include a Silvertone Danelectro guitar owned by former Beatle Harrison and rockstar Petty and given as a gift to Fred Gretsch in 1987.
The instrument, a prototype of supergroup Traveling Wilburys’ Gretsch guitar line, is expected to fetch between £14,600-£29,200.
A Gretsch prototype of U2 star Bono’s Irish Falcon Model 6136 electric guitar complete with green finish and the words “The Goal is Soul” on the pickguard has a guide price of between £5,800-£7,300.
A Historic Series G3100 acoustic guitar signed by the revered folk singer John Prine is predicted to sell for between £511-£658. Prine, a contemporary of Bob Dylan, died in April last year aged 73 after contracting Covid-19.
Other highlights include a 1964 Gretsch Chet Atkins Nashville PX6120 electric guitar with orange finish, a 1959 Chet Atkins PX6121 electric guitar and a 1963 Gretsch Chet Atkins Tennessean PX6119 electric guitar with dark cherry finish.
Source: Keiran Southern/belfasttelegraph.co.uk
Legendary radio and television host Larry King’s death this weekend at age 87 has us looking anew at the hour-long, nightly interviews on CNN for which he was most famous.
King simply sat across a desk, one on one with his guest, and asked the short, agreeable questions he was known for that reflected his innate curiosity.
Inevitably, the broadcaster would get his visitor – whether celebrity, politician, sports figure, or even convicted criminal – to open up perhaps even more than they themselves had intended.
King revealed in 2010 the chat that permanently changed his negative view of the English rock band The Beatles.
Source: cheatsheet.com
From the very beginning, a big part of The Beatles appeal was visual. In his book The Art of The Beatles, Mike Evans explained, “their image was always unique. Unlike their contemporaries on the music scene, whose style reflected the times, The Beatles invariably helped to establish fashion.” From their pre-fame days, they always had a look – uniform, in every sense. When they first emerged, the press was obsessed with their mop-top haircuts, their matching Cuban-heeled boots, their collarless jackets. How they presented themselves was vital to what made them so… different. And nowhere was this reflected more consistently than on their record covers. Photography, illustration, graphic design – Beatles album covers changed them all.
Before The Beatles, album art was designed to sell the contents – song titles and sales messages on top of the artist’s bright image. But within a few short years, The Beatles album covers were works of art in their own right. Images such as the half-lit heads on With The Beatles, the psychedelic nostalgia of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the simplicity of crossing Abbey Road rank as some of the most influential and enduring art of the 20th century, clearing the way for others like The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, and countless others to go even further.
Source: Paul McGuinness/udiscovermusic.com
"I think you just cut your first number one," Lennon told Ono during their 1980 recording session
Along with "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine," "Walking on Thin Ice" holds a vaunted place among the collaborative works of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Indeed, it would be the final, poignant act in the story of their remarkable artistic association.
Composed by Ono, "Walking on Thin Ice" began to take shape for Yoko during one of the Lennons' car trips between their estate in Cold Spring Harbor and New York City's Dakota apartment building. After writing the song's ethereal lyrics, Yoko challenged herself to concoct an ambitious new sound to bring the composition's music to fruition. "I wanted to push it a little further, experimentally," she later recalled. "So I was thinking about Alban Berg, in one of his oper
s, you know, where a drunk is going 'ahaahaahaa.' Just sort of saying things, but in such a way that the emphasis is all wrong, distorted" (Madeline Bocaro, "Just a Story: 'Walking On Thin Ice,'" December 8, 2016).
Source: Kenneth Womack/salon.com
