Beatles News
Music icon Paul McCartney made a sweet gesture to legendary pop group Sparks after he impersonated one of the members, Ron Mael, in his 1980 video for his song Coming Up. The star ensured the group had a very special memento of the occasion. Paul played all the instruments on the track and the video saw him singing the song on stage as he and wife Linda adopted a range of disguises to make up the members of the fictional band The Plastic Macs including an homage to Ron, whose toothbrush moustache and slicked back hair created an instantly memorable visual when Sparks broke though in 1974.
The group comprised of brothers Russell and Ron Mael, are huge Beatles fans but despite Paul paying tribute to songwriter Ron they still haven't met him. However they revealed they have a very special signed photo of the star dressed as Ron hanging in their studio.
"We never met, Paul McCartney but we know the guitar player Paul has in his band now. And he we were talking to him one day, and there was a poster of, I think it was a Linda McCartney photo of Paul dressed as Ron in that video.
"So we asked our friend who's in the band 'I wonder if you could get Paul to sign this'. So we do have a signed Paul McCartney taken by Linda McCartney photo in our studio," Russell revealed.
Asked how he felt about Paul impersonating him Ron said: "He performs a lot of different other people. And I was honoured just to be imitated, the keyboard player imitated for that video."
Alongside Ron in the clip Paul also paid tribute to many other influential musicians including Buddy Holly, Andy Mackay of Roxy Music and even the Beatle-mania version of himself.
Source: express.co.uk/Fran Winston
When talking about The Beatles, it’s always John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Not Ringo, George, John, and Paul. Since the band’s origins, Ringo Starr has always taken a back seat in The Beatles and never received the extensive limelight the other three did. Though that wasn’t just the masses who helped shape that narrative. As a matter of fact, at a certain point during The Beatles’ time together, Starr felt that McCartney, Lennon, and Harrison were neglecting him as a friend and bandmate.
Ringo Starr was, in fact, a later addition to The Beatles. And unlike the other three, he was not a childhood friend of theirs. That being said, it seems John, Paul, and George had a special connection that did not include Ringo Starr, and it became clear when they recorded their White Album in 1968. It was so clear, that Ringo Starr actually temporarily left The Beatles during the recording process.
Ringo Starr Felt Ostracized and Unimportant
Being left out and disconnected from your peers is arguably one of the worst sensations a human being can endure. After all, we are social creatures, and nobody wants to be lonely. Ringo Starr is no different from the rest of us; hence, when he felt this was way in the group, he put his foot down and simply left.
“I only went out because I did feel like we’d done ‘[Sgt.] Pepper’, and that was fine, and we were trying to be a band again, which I loved,” Starr recalled on The Howard Stern Show. “And then I’m there in the studio, and it’s like I don’t feel good. I don’t feel part of it.”
Source: americansongwriter.com/Peter Burditt
Every single album The Beatles released was revolutionary in its own right. However, when it comes to cultural influence and trend-setting, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is arguably the most revolutionary. This is primarily due to the fact that with the album, The Beatles helped further introduce psychedelic rock to the mainstream.
Yes, Jimi Hendrix was already doing his thing at the time of the album’s release, and The Doors were one of the most integral groups of the 1960s scene. But on May 26, 1967, The Beatles arguably made the biggest contribution to the subgenre and counterculture movement with the release of this album.
The Beatles’ iconic album did not come easily. Rather, the band recorded the 13-track album over 129 days. They began in December of 1966 and finished it before its release in May of 1967. Furthermore, the inspiration behind the album came from the desire to stray away from their prototypical sound. Or, rather, the prototypical sound that created the monster that “Beatlemania” was. That being said, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, and John Lennon wanted to climb out of their skin and crawl into something new. Needless to say, they did so gloriously with Sgt. Pepper.
Following the release of the album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band peaked at no. 1 on the Billboard 200 and remained there for 15 consecutive weeks. In addition to garnering the top spot on the Billboard 200, the album also won Album of the Year at the 10th annual Grammy Awards. More importantly, the body of work inspired generations of musicians and changed the trajectory of late ’60s and early 70s rock and roll.
Regarding the lasting impact of the album, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd stated that the album helped the group create their magnum opus, The Dark Side Of The Moon.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Peter Burditt
John Lennon‘s sister Julia Baird has spoken to NME about the launch of a new London exhibition space that features a recreation of the icon’s childhood bedroom, as well as opening up about her issues with the upcoming Beatles biopics. Check out footage from the launch and our interview with Baird below.
Having launched this week at Camden’s Stables, Live Odyssey has been previously described as “a celebration of the rich tapestry of British music, offering a unique experience for music lovers of all ages” through “a groundbreaking tribute to the sounds that shaped Britain”.
The attraction – which combines live music, an exhibition museum, and a hologram performance from The Libertines – will take fans through six decades of music via a two-and-a-half-hour adventure that captures the evolution of British pop, from the early anthems of the ’60s and ’70s to the Britpop explosion of the ’90s and today.
This week saw Baird will unveil a multi-sensory immersive exhibit dedicated to the late Lennon which “details the early years that shaped Lennon through to a life of stratospheric fame with The Beatles” through artefacts, paintings, drawings, writings, moving photographs, provided by James Wilkinson.
This includes a recreation of Lennon’s childhood bedroom, which Baird described as “very moving”.
“If you’re a Beatles fan you’ve either been to Mendips or seen a picture of John’s childhood home, where he had what is known as ‘the box room’,” Baird told NME. “You couldn’t fit much in there. You had six inches to move everywhere. It’s very true to life: the bed, the red quilt, the lot. It’s a good imitation of what his room was like. He was in there writing all the time and doing his cartoons.”
Source: nme.com/Andrew Trendell
Ringo Starr is one of the most iconic artists of our time, and whether you grew up during the time of The Beatles or not, it's hard to deny what an influence he's had on music over the decades.
At 84 years old, he's still very much in the limelight and has been playing solo tours for years. He and his All Star Band have another tour kicking off this June, with the first show scheduled for June 12 in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Starr recently sat down with the AP for an interview, and he mentioned a photo of his feet that went viral after he shared it on social media. I think we can all agree what he said is just classic Ringo.
"Did you see that I put on my toes... with peace and love?"
"Not the dogs, Ringo!" LOL. So many people are cracking up over that comment!
He continued, "They all have something to say, you know, and a lot of it is peace and love, but some of them like to s--t on me."
Starr also went on to say he doesn't let negative comments get to him. "Not going to spoil my day."
People who watched the clip couldn't help but weigh in. One fan said, "Who's bullying Ringo? We need to talk!"
Another added, "'Not going to spoil MY day' was so sassy. I love him."
Someone else said, "How can anybody give him slack? He's a total legend ✌️☮️❤️"
And another summed it up with, "He’s Ringo Starr. Those people that try and troll him are just annoying like a gnat or a fly."
In case you were curious, here's the infamous "dogs" photo.
I mean... what do you expect from a dude in his 80s? To be honest, his toes could be a heck of a lot worse. Just sayin'.
Source: parade.com/Mary Hawkins
Paul McCartney has had a negative thing or two to say about his work with The Beatles… as well as other members’ work in The Beatles. He’s never been one to mince words and has been quite honest about the songs he wanted to improve on, as well as the ones he straight-up stole. However, Macca doesn’t hate everything he produced with the Fab Four. In fact, there are quite a few songs that he’s particularly fond of. Let’s look at just a few Beatles songs that Paul McCartney has said he loves!
“And Your Bird Can Sing” is a neat little deep cut from Revolver. In the notes on Anthology, Paul McCartney named the track as one of his favorite songs from that particular era, especially the Anthology version of the song.
“One of my favorites on the ‘Anthology’ is ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’, which is a nice song, but this take of it was one we couldn’t use at the time,” said McCartney. “John and I got a fit of the giggles while we were doing the double-track. You couldn’t have released it at the time. But now you can. Sounds great just hearing us lose it on a take.”
“Happiness Is A Warm Gun”
This song from the White Album was written by John Lennon, and McCartney has praised it in the past. He even referred to the song’s title, which was inspired by an ad in a gun magazine, as “good poetry.” In the 2003 book The Beatles On Apple Records, McCartney and George Harrison allegedly named “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” as their favorite song from the White Album.
Source: Em Casalena/americansongwriter.com
Tensions had been rising between the bandmates before Paul announced his decision to quit in 1970. He spent the next few years feuding with John, with the pair even taking aim at one another through songs.
John started the feud with his track How Do You Sleep? before Paul hit back with Too Many People. However, the pair eventually put aside their differences and reconciled. Author Ian Leslie, who has written a book about Paul and John, believes the pair actually "never stopped caring about each other."
Speaking exclusively to The Mirror US, he explained, "They never stopped respecting each other as songwriters. And they always missed each other as creative partners."
Leslie continued, "I think they just missed each other in that sense." However, it wasn't easy for John and Paul to get their friendship back to the way it was.
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Leslie told us, "It was very hard by that stage, they had their own families, there were the legal and business problems and divisions and they lived in different countries. So they couldn't kind of re-establish their old friendship."
Source: themirror.com/Scarlett O'Toole
Bruce Springsteen isn’t the first rock star to face the ire of a pushy POTUS. Fifty years ago, Richard Nixon went to war against John Lennon over the former Beatle’s peacenik politics.
Before Donald Trump took to Truth Social to rage against Bruce Springsteen — calling him a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker” and threatening ominously that “we’ll all see how it goes for him” — another American president once tried to silence a politically outspoken rock star.
But Richard Nixon didn’t just tweet insults at John Lennon. He tried to deport him.
That 1970s-era culture war — now resurrected in a new doc, One to One: John & Yoko — echoes eerily in Trump’s latest feud with American music royalty. Lennon, a British citizen with a U.S. green card living in New York at the time, had aligned himself with the radical left and spoken out forcefully against the Vietnam War and Nixon’s re-election. The Nixon administration responded by weaponizing immigration law, trying to boot Lennon back to the UK over an old pot bust. It was a thin pretext, and everyone knew it.
FBI files were opened. Surveillance began. Lennon became a target. The former Beatle hit back the only way he knew how, through his music. “I’ve had enough of reading things by neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians,” he sang in “Gimme Some Truth,” the song that opens the second side of 1971’s Imagine. “No short-haired, yellow-bellied son of Tricky Dick is going to Mother Hubbard soft soap me.”
Finally, in 1975, after years of legal battles, a federal court shut down the case, calling it “selective deportation based on secret political grounds.” But the damage had already been done: Lennon’s activism had been effectively neutered. And five years later, at just 40, Lennon was gunned down by a deranged fan outside his home on New York’s upper west side.
Nearly fifty years later, Trump......
Source: hollywoodreporter.com/Steve Bloom
John Lennon is a perfect example of an artist who created music that defined an era. His iconic song Imagine is known as an anthem of the counterculture movement as it encapsulates many of the ideals counterculture campaigned for and promotes peace and unity.
The Beatles too, created songs that soundtracked a world in the midst of a cultural revolution. Although the counterculture movement failed to abolish hate, The Beatles, alongside a new generation of artists helped to redefine culture at the time and it is a movement that is everlasting.
During this era, mind-altering substances such as LSD grew in popularity, particularly among rock musicians and Lennon was no exception. He labelled one song from that era of transforamtion as a "dope song".
The reality of the 1960s is that drug use and artistry went hand in hand and often influenced one another. The Beatles themselves were known to dabble with LSD and their sound changed following their discovery of the hallucinogenic drug.
They transformed their pop bops to songs into music that was important and required a degree of thought behind it. They became more experimental and had new eastern influences that weaved through their music.
In his book Lennon: The Definitive Biography, Ray Coleman mentions a conversation at a party at Brian Epstein’s house, just prior to the release of the Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper, Coleman said: "We spoke a little about the state of the music scene, and he (Lennon) said there was one ‘dope’ record which he couldn’t get off his mind. He couldn’t remember the title. All other pop music of that period was ‘crap’, one of his favourite words at that time."
Source: Molly Toolan/express.co.uk
There's been no shortage of material about the Beatles, perhaps the most heavily documented musical group in history. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr's earth-shattering appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 has been recounted in many films and TV specials, most famously Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night, so what more could possibly be said about the iconic moment? For David Tedeschi, director of Beatles '64, there was a lot of meat left on the bone.
As Tedeschi tells Gold Derby, "the seed of the idea was this extraordinary footage" shot by legendary documentarians David and Albert Maysles "which had never really been given its due." The footage "only covered about two-and-a-half weeks of time," documenting the group's first trip to America. "It was a very short trip, but it felt momentous. We thought with this extraordinary footage it could be the beginning of something that had never been seen before."
Tedeschi discovered the footage through the Beatle's company, Apple Corps, which had given the negative to Peter Jackson, director of the docuseries The Beatles: Get Back, to restore. Having edited Martin Scorsese's documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World, he had a good enough relationship with Apple Corps - not to mention McCartney,Starr, Yoko Ono, and Olivia Harrison - to be granted access to the restored footage. "There was a lot of trust and understanding," Tedeschi says of his relationships with the surviving Beatles and their family members. "It was very helpful ... that they looked at the film and they gave their insights."
Source: Story by Zach Laws/MSN
