Beatles News
Maya Hawke scored her biggest role to date with the news on Friday that she'll be starring in the upcoming comedy film Revolver.
The 22-year-old actress will play the lead role in the film about a surprise meeting with The Beatles in Alaska in the mid-1960s, Variety reported.
Joining the Stranger Things star as her on-screen dad will be her real-life father Ethan Hawke, 49.
The northern city is thrown into chaos after a flight carrying The Beatles to Japan makes an unannounced stop in Anchorage, sending the residents into fits of Beatlemania.
Jane thinks her ticket to adulthood involves losing her virginity to George Harrison during the band's pit stop at a local hotel, but she learns that what she's really seeking is right in front of her.
Not much is known about Ethan's arc in the film, but he's more than qualified to play Jane's father.
Source: Brian Marks/dailymail.co.uk
The Stones were bolder. The Who was louder. But the Beatles simply ruled, from their first single in ’62 until their breakup eight years later. The argument can still be made that they ruled.
Everyone knew them, or thought they did.
As Craig Brown’s “150 Glimpses of the Beatles” suggests, to understand them, you must push past the publicity, the myths, the lies. His doorstop of a book digs deep to try to uncover the truth.
It was July 6, 1957, when the Beatles began. John Lennon, surly and nearly 17, was performing at a school event with his band, the Quarrymen. Paul McCartney, just 15, watched nervously. “I wouldn’t look at him too hard, in case he hit me,” McCartney said later.
Afterward, McCartney worked up the nerve to introduce himself. He played a few songs, including “Be-Bop-a-Lula.”
“He was as good as me,” Lennon marveled. “It went through my head that I’d have to keep him in line if I let him join. But he was good, so he was worth having. He also looked like Elvis.”
Source: Jacqueline Cutler/nydailynews.com
Listen to ‘Isolation’, the sparse fifth track on ‘Plastic Ono Band’ (John Lennon’s first post-Beatles record), a meditative piano ballad on which he laments the fact that “the world may not have many years”, and you may find it difficult to believe that the album turns 50 this year. Featuring both the brittle, paranoid ‘Working Class Hero’ and the unabashedly romantic ‘Love’, it’s a timeless collection that truly encompasses the complex singer-songwriter’s duality.
It would have been John Lennon’s 80th birthday earlier this month. To celebrate both this and the album’s anniversary, publisher Thames & Hudson has released John & Yoko / Plastic Ono Band, a lush coffee table book that gathers together interviews new and old, hand-written song lyrics and previously unseen photos – from Lennon’s childhood snaps to candid studio pics – that tell the story of this singular musician and magnificent record.
Source: Jordan Bassett/nme.com
If you were a fan of Jamaican giants Toots Hibbert and Bob Marley, the idea of British pop stars recording reggae songs might have terrified you. Did the world need that ’74 Eric Clapton cover of “I Shot the Sheriff”? Clapton thought so. The former members of The Beatles also went there in the ’70s.
That wouldn’t have come as a complete surprise to fans of the Fab Four. After all, The Beatles took their first stab at Jamaican music way back on 1964’s “I Call Your Name.” On that track, you hear the band shift into a ska beat in the middle eight bars.
Island sounds crept into the band’s music again on The White Album (1968). On that record, McCartney developed “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” with a rocksteady beat. (While the recording reportedly bugged Lennon to no end, it wasn’t the groove that annoyed him.)
After the Beatles’ breakup, Toots & The Maytals and Marley & The Wailers broke internationally with their reggae sounds. And Lennon and McCartney took a stab at the music in their ’70s solo work. In both Lennon’s and McCartney’s cases, these dives into reggae predated that of Clapton.
Source: cheatsheet.com
The Beatles and Fleetwood Mac are both classic rock bands, but you wouldn’t really associate one with the other. However, one of the Fab Four’s later songs was directly inspired by a Fleetwood Mac song. Here’s how Fleetwood Mac inspired The Beatles — and how John Lennon’s passing inspired a member of Fleetwood Mac.There are numerous books and articles about The Beatles’ influence on pop culture, however, The Beatles definitely drew inspiration from other artists. For example, Abbey Road is filled with references to other artists. Listen closely, and you’ll hear homages to everyone from Ludwig van Beethoven to Chuck Berry. In addition, one of the tracks from Abbey Road took influence from one of the Fab Four’s contemporaries, Fleetwood Mac.
Source: cheatsheet.com
John Lennon was married twice at different times of his life, though his marriage to Yoko Ono was best known. Before this, however, he was married to Cynthia Lennon, whom he met before he was famous. But what happened to Cynthia, after she and John broke up?
Cynthia Lennon first met John in 1957, when they were both attending Liverpool College of Art.
They began dating and in 1962 she became pregnant with Julian, who was subsequently born on April 8, 1963.
At this time, the band was only just making it big in the music business, but in the years which followed, The Beatles’ fame morphed into Beatlemania
Their relationship began to break down until John met avant-garde artist Yoko Ono and they began corresponding in 1966.
Source: Jenny Desborough/express.co.uk
From classic American rockers to British artists to the estates of late legends, here's a look at some of the musicians who have objected to Donald Trump using their songs at campaign events.
JOHN FOGERTY, PHIL COLLINS, BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
Some classic rockers say not only do they oppose Trump using their music, the choice of songs is ironic or downright wrong. John Fogerty, who last week sent the campaign a cease-and-desist letter over the use of “Fortunate Son” by his band Creedence Clearwater Revival, said he was baffled by the use of a song that could have been written to slam Trump. Phil Collins sent the campaign a demand to stop using “In the Air Tonight" after it was played at an Iowa rally this month. Many observers say it was an odd song to choose given that the air among the mostly mask-less people at the rally could have been spreading the coronavirus. And just as he had with Ronald Reagan in 1984, Bruce Springsteen objected in 2016 to Trump blasting “Born in the U.S.A." as a patriotic anthem, when it's actually a scathing indictment of the treatment of Vietnam vets.
Source: clickorlando.com
Grammy-Award winner Steve Lukather, best known as the lead guitarist for Toto, recently joined host Kenneth Womack to talk about the Beatles on "Everything Fab Four," a new podcast co-produced by me and Womack, a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon, and distributed by Salon.
Lukather, who has played on over 2,000 rock and pop tracks, talks about how he went from being "shitty at sports" and "bullied as a kid" to finding his soul in music when the Beatles hit "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1964.
"Life went from black-and-white to color," says Lukather. "I was like, I gotta learn how to do that. I [joined] a band when I was nine. I mean, what are the odds of a little kid from West Hollywood seeing the Beatles on 'Ed Sullivan,' then playing on the 50th anniversary of that show?"
Nowadays, having been a member of Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band for years, he counts Ringo as one of his closest friends. "I cherish that relationship probably more than anything at this point," Lukather says. "Ringo's the coolest guy I've ever been friends with — and I have a lot of cool friends."
Source: salon.com
During an appearance on BBC 6 Music, The Beatles legend Paul McCartney talked about the ongoing pandemic, his upcoming new album "McCartney III," and more.
"McCartney III" is due this December, you can check it out here via Amazon.
When the interviewer said, "This is 'McCartney III,' so let's do a bit of context - if this is maybe the third part of the trilogy. 'McCartney I' in 1970 - that was kind of the start of the lo-fi-DIY-play-and-produce-everything-yourself. Have you always had a soft spot for that record?
"Oh, yeah. It happened just because I was spending a bit of time at home because, suddenly, I wasn't in The Beatles anymore.
"So you're a bit of a loose end, to say the least. But I had all my stuff - I had a drum kit, I had my bass, I had my guitar, had an amp, I got hold of a four-track recorder from EMI, which is the same machine that we'd used with The Beatles.
"So I just went real-lo-fi, just plugged the microphone straight into the back - didn't have a mixing desk - and made some music. That was it!"
Source: jomatami/ultimate-guitar.com
Paul McCartney has hailed Peter Jackson’s upcoming documentary Get Back for providing an authentic portrait of The Beatles‘ final years together.
The new film from the Lord Of The Rings director captures the making of the band’s final album, 1970’s ‘Let It Be’, which is set to challenge the popular narrative that the group constantly clashed during their later years.
When asked about his early reactions to the film, McCartney told BBC 6Music’s Matt Everitt: “I love it”.
He also admitted that he originally questioned why Jackson wished to make the film – which draws from material originally captured by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg for his 1970 documentary of the album.
“I said to him [Jackson] when he was going to trawl through all the footage – like about 56 hours or something – I said, ‘Oh God, it’s going to be boring’ because my memory of the [original 1970] film was that it was a very sad time, and it was a little bit downbeat, the film,” he admitted.
Source: Nick Reilly/nme.com
