Beatles News
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
On May 23, 2024, Paul McCartney presented an Ivor Novello award to Bruce Springsteen. There, he took the opportunity to engage in some good-natured ribbing. Springsteen was being awarded with an Academy Fellowship, and was the first international artist to earn the award.
“I couldn’t think of a more fitting recipient,” McCartney began in his introduction. He playfully continued, “Except maybe Bob Dylan. Or Paul Simon, or Billy Joel, or Beyoncé, or Taylor Swift. The list goes on,” according to a report from The Guardian.
McCartney then added, “He’s known as the American working man, but he admits he’s never worked a day in his life.” He switched gears after that, instead reminiscing about Glastonbury 2022 when he and Springsteen performed together. McCartney concluded by calling Springsteen “a lovely boy.”
When Paul McCartney teases you on stage, you take it in stride, because he’s probably right. Bruce Springsteen, for his part, accepted the award and the good-natured ribbing with ease and humor. During his acceptance speech, he made a comment about the typical English weather.
Springsteen and the E Street Band had played in Sunderland the previous night and were faced with intense weather. However, Springsteen revealed that seeing the crowd sparked something in him that made him forget about the rain.
“We came out last night, and I was like: what is this weather? Driving rain, wind roaring,” he said. For the English, that’s just a Tuesday. “But,” Springsteen continued, “standing in front of me, in the rain, I realized: these are my people.”
Bruce Springsteen was the first international artist to receive the Academy Fellowship from the Ivor Academy. He joined artists such as U2, Sting, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, and Annie Lennox. The fellowship recognizes craft, artistry, and impact in music creation. Members include rock and rollers, pop stars, composers, conductors, and singer-songwriters.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Lauren Boisvert
Yes, we know that The Beatles were never actually part of Motown – either as a band or as individuals.
After that infamous failed audition at Decca ("guitar groups are on their way out"), George Martin signed the band for EMI subsidiary Parlophone in 1962
That's where they stayed until they formed Apple Records in 1968, with EMI still dealing with distribution.
Over in the US things started off in messy fashion with the band bouncing form Vee-Jay and then to Swan Records, before Capitol took the band on in 1964. Again, Apple Records took over from The Beatles on.
So where on earth do we get off with calling The Beatles the ultimate Motown band?
Well, despite not actually being signed to the band, their two-way links to the whole sound of Motown is absolutely vital to the story of The Beatles.
While they're rightly credited for mashing up the influence of early rock 'n' roll and skiffle with their own songwriting, you could hear the influence of Motown on the sound of the Beatles from the very beginning.
What was it that bound these two geographically diverse movements of Motown and Merseybeat?
British label Oriole Records represented Tamla Motown on these shores and with its busy docks, Merseyside was the biggest source of Motown records in the UK.
Mersey Beat magazine founder Bill Harry spoke to Record Collector in 2009 about the links between these two centres of early 1960s pop.
"The Tamla Motown numbers were included in the repertoire of the Liverpool bands," he explained.
"They adapted the songs to fit in with the developing Liverpool sound, the basic three guitars/drums/harmony lineup which produced a hybrid sound which I was to call 'the Mersey Motown sound'."
And The Beatles made that Motown connection explicit with a number of covers of Motown originals during their early live shows. They recorded a few for their radio sessions.
They recorded a few for their radio sessions and even laid down a trio for one of their albums.
The Beatles — Please Mr. Postman
While six of the 14 songs on The Beatles debut Please Please Me were covers, none were Motown originals. It was on the follow-up With The Beatles that they really showed off that side of their sound.
Source: Mayer Nissim/goldradio.com
The Beatles boast an official catalogue of 213 songs released between 1962 until their split in 1970, including 188 originals and 25 covers, making them the most successful band in music history.
The iconic Liverpool quartet, consisting of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, were all the rage during their eight-year stint thanks to a series of songs written by Lennon and McCartney, though of course Harrison and Starr also contributed classics including 'Here Comes The Sun' and 'Octopus's Garden' respectively.
Even today, The Beatles' songs resonate as strongly as they did during the height of 60s Beatlemania. Devoted followers of the Fab Four have recently taken to Reddit to discuss tracks that featured no involvement from Lennon, who was tragically shot and killed at the age of 40 by Mark David Chapman in New York City in 1980.
A curious fan of the Fab Four on TheBeatles subreddit sparked the conversation by asking: "Which Beatles songs did John Lennon NOT perform on?" In the ensuing discussion, several users pointed out that two of McCartney's legendary singles, 'Blackbird' and 'Yesterday', were created without any contribution from Lennon.
One enthusiast remarked, "Yesterday was the song Lennon always wished he had written," adding an anecdote about Lennon's reaction to his own hit 'Imagine': "Apparently, right after he [Lennon] came up with 'Imagine', he asked someone if it was as good as 'Yesterday'. The response was that the two were impossible to compare. Lennon responded 'you'll see, it's just as good as Yesterday'."
Several fans pointed to 'Mother Nature's Son', from The White Album in 1968, as another song McCartney penned and recorded solo, despite Lennon being co-credited. Meanwhile, a handful of other tracks from The White Album also lacked Lennon's musical touch - 'Good Night', 'Wild Honey Pie', 'Martha My Dear' and 'I Will'.
Source: express.co.uk/Alan Johnson
