Beatles News
The German photographer shot some of the earliest pictures of the Beatles and helped shape their iconic visual style. Tributes poured in following her death, with Ringo Starr calling her "a beautiful human being."
Astrid Kirchherr, a German photographer famous for her early images of the Beatles in the 1960s, has died at the age of 81.
She died on Tuesday in her hometown of Hamburg just days before her 82nd birthday, her friend and fellow photographer Kai-Uwe Franz said on Friday.
German newspaper Die Zeit reported that she passed away following a "short, serious illness."
Kirchherr took some of the earliest pictures of the band during their time in Hamburg. In addition to her striking images, she's also credited with influencing the style of band's clothes and their infamous mop-top hairdos.
Source: Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com)
52 years ago today would see John Lennon appear alongside Paul McCartney for an appearance on The Tonight Show. Quite a coup to have two of The Beatles in the studio at one time but that wouldn’t stop the tapes from being lost for decades.
Thankfully, however, one Beatles super fan recorded the fascinating interview and would upload the content onto the internet years later. The tapes offer an intriguing viewpoint of Lennon and McCartney just before their relationship would come crashing down.
The appearance came at a pivotal time in The Beatles‘ career. They were in the midst of announcing their new company Apple Corps and had just come back rejuvenated from a spell of meditation in India. Just two weeks after this appearance on The Tonight Show they would begin the recording sessions for The White Album in London. The programme was hosted by Joe Garagiola rather than Johnny Carson on this occasion and actress Tellulah Bankhead was also a guest for the evening. But everybody had tuned in to see The Beatles.
Source: Joe Taysom·/faroutmagazine.co.uk
The Beatles and The Rolling Stones are two of the biggest bands to come out of the UK. And it was Mick Jagger who inducted the Fab Four into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame back in 1988. During his speech, the singer revealed which Beatles song made him sick with jealousy.
During his induction speech, Jagger said: “At that point, the Stones were playing at these little clubs in London.
“[We were] doing Chuck Berry songs and blues and things.
“And we [were] a pretty scruffy lot and we thought that we were totally unique animals.
“I mean there was no one like us.”
The Rolling Stones frontman continued: “And then we heard there was a group from Liverpool.
“This group, they had long hair, scruffy clothes but they had a record contract.
“And they had a record in the charts, with a bluesy harmonica on it, called Love Me Do.
“When I heard the combination of all these things, I was almost sick.”
Source: George Simpson/express.co.uk
“The Girl Can’t Help It” is a 1956 film by Frank Tashlin about a young woman, played by Jayne Mansfield, who dreams of being a star vocalist. Some consider it the first rock ‘n’ roll music video ever made; built into the story line were full versions of song performances by Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent. But Little Richard’s music was the star of the show – so much so that his song “The Girl Can’t Help It” became the movie’s title.
At a small Liverpool movie theater, a 14-year-old Paul McCartney watched the hit film, mesmerized by the energy, talent and charisma of Little Richard, who had a cameo performing “Ready Teddy.”
Source: Clint Randles/theconversation.com
Reasonable visionary that he was, George Martin strongly encouraged the boys to drop the filler, the frivolity and the self indulgence and pare the double album down to a tight single record.
“I really didn’t think a lot of the songs were worthy of release,” Martin famously said. “I said, ‘I don’t want a double album. I think you ought to cut out some of these, concentrate on the really good ones and have yourself a really super album.’”
The boys, or more appropriately The Boys, would hear none of it.
For an album cohesively entitled “The Beatles,” 1968′s “White Album” is by far the most self-centered and disjointed of all the band’s releases.
The majority of the songs were written, individually, while John, Paul, George and Ringo were on meditation retreat in India. And when it came time to commit the creations to tape, rarely were all four Fabs in the studio at the same time.
Source: Jon Pompia/chieftain.com
The Beatles were not one for using real names in their material and, instead, opted to use fantastical sounding names that listeners didn’t need telling were fictional—take, for example, ‘Mean Mr. Mustard’. But even with that said, was ‘Eleanor Rigby’ the exemption to the rule?
The song famously sees Paul McCartney curate the story of a lonely woman named Eleanor Rigby and an inept pastor named Father McKenzie who, as part of the tale, delivers the sermon at Rigby’s funeral after she dies alone to an empty service.
McCartney originally believed that he made up the surnames in the track and decided to use the name ‘Eleanor’ because of Eleanor Bron, an actress who appeared in The Beatles’ film Help!. The surname of the Eleanor Rigby character was originally Bygraves before Macca changed it to Rigby after seeing a Bristol wine merchant called ‘Rigby & Evens Ltd, Wine & Spirit Shippers’.
The priest in the song originally labelled ‘Father McCartney‘ because the name found a perfect fit with the beat. However, the Beatle didn’t want to freak his Dad out so decided to have a look through the phone book and landed on ‘McKenzie’ and that was that, ‘Eleanor Rigby’ was finished.
Source: Joe Taysom/faroutmagazine.co.uk
Did the Let It Be documentary (1970) portray The Beatles as more unhappy than they actually were? Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr think so, and that’s why the two surviving members of the Fab Four can’t wait for the upcoming The Beatles: Get Back doc by Peter Jackson.
Indeed, if we see the band joyously at work in January ’69, the doc will represent a revelation. After all, George Harrison recalled the Get Back/Let It Be sessions as a “terrible,” “stressful, difficult time.” And he described the film shoot as “very unhealthy and unhappy” for him.
Instead of comparing documentaries to see who’s right (or who has the more sympathetic film editor) you might just look at the music The Beatles recorded in January ’69. In George’s corner, you won’t find much.
If you add up the songs that made it onto Let It Be, you’d only get a total of 4 minutes 6 seconds of music prior to Phil Spector’s enhancements. And you’ll hear John Lennon taking two guitar solos on the record as well.
Source: cheatsheet.com
We are certainly not lacking for expert opinions about how to cope with this coronavirus pandemic. Some colleagues even feel they are overdosing on them (and mine), and won’t read them anymore. Maybe, then, we need a change of pace, to hear from our popular entertainers from the past. Did they have anything useful to tell us in a different way?
Let’s take the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Why them? They were the most popular in an era when we were going through another period of social upheaval, the 1960s. If you weren’t there, Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass” is a musical theater piece of the times, first shown in 1971, the year I graduated from medical school at Yale. It is being shown on the PBS television series “Great Performances” on May 15.
Secondly, the Beatles and Stones seemed like competitive opposites, almost like we have in partisan politics, another kind of culture wars, today. The Beatles tended to be viewed as the “good boys” of rock and roll, with the Stones as the “bad boys.” Yet, both groups played early shows with Little Richard, who died this past weekend.
Source: H. Steven Moffic, MD/psychcongress.com
For Beatles fans, 1970 was a particularly heavy year - one in which we watched one of our most beloved bands fall apart, and witnessed the rebirth of each Beatle as a solo artist.
The chronology itself is crazy. A slew of Beatles-related albums were released in the space of that single year, starting with Ringo Starr’s solo debut, Sentimental Journey, in March. Then came Paul McCartney’s self-titled debut LP in April, along with a press release making it more or less clear that the Beatles were finished.
The stage was set for the May release of the Beatles’ final album, though penultimate rerecording, Let It Be: a troubled and uneven set of tracks culled from sessions in 1969 that hadn’t gone well.
It was the soundtrack album for a film of the same title, which chronicled the tragedy of a great band falling apart, while also giving us a last look at that Beatles magic, resplendent even in dysfunction.
Source: guitarworld.com
The beloved anthropomorphic steam engine, a favourite of generations of children, first appeared in the Reverend Wilbert Awdry’s The Railway Series books, originally published in 1945.
The TV adaption arrived in 1984 and proved a hit with viewers, with the colourful cast of characters – including engines Thomas and Percy, as well as railway overseer the Fat Controller – captivating young audiences.
Thomas & Friends celebrates its 75th anniversary on Tuesday and to mark the occasion here are some of the show’s best celebrity guests: RINGO STARR
Source: irishnews.com
