Beatles News
The Beatles’ catalog is packed to the brim with songs that have stood the test of time and are still beloved to this day. Many of their most popular tracks became hits when they were new, especially in the United Kingdom, the band’s home base. A few of their famous compositions never reached the weekly rankings, for one reason or another, but that doesn’t make them unsuccessful.
One of The Beatles’ most familiar and most-covered songs somehow escaped the U.K. charts for decades. That losing streak—if it can even be called that—is over, as the track debuts on one list across the pond.
“Blackbird” finally becomes a chart hit in the U.K., as of this week. The tune debuts at No. 96 on the Official Singles Downloads ranking, which tracks the bestselling legal downloads in the nation.
The Official Singles Downloads chart is the first list that “Blackbird” has appeared on in the U.K. That may be difficult to believe for many fans of the Fab Four—and the song itself—but it’s true. Despite its legacy and popularity, the title has never sold or streamed well enough in one tracking period to land on any list until now.
The Beatles released “Blackbird” in 1968. It was featured on their self-titled project, which is also known as The White Album, due to its largely blank cover. The song was never selected as a single, but it’s become a classic nonetheless.
The White Album never produced any singles, so “Blackbird” isn’t alone in its album cut status. The full-length also features fellow Beatles favorites like "Back in the U.S.S.R.," "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da," and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," among other fan favorites, and no one can call those tracks unsuccessful.
Source: Hugh McIntyre/forbes.com
Despite being an American-dominated genre, there has been a fair share of foreign musicians to toil in country music. Ringo Starr, The Rolling Stones, Tommy Emmanuel, and numerous others hail from other countries yet still play the American-founded genre. However, there is one more monstrous name and figure to add to that list, the one and only, John Lennon.
For a vast amount of reasons, this might come as an enormous surprise. But, at the end of the day, Lennon’s fleeting stint in country music proves that above all, he was a pure musician. When one listens to Lennon’s 1974 country single, they might believe there is nothing country about. Though, given its use of steel guitar, American roots lyrics, and the story behind it, it is, without a doubt, John Lennon’s most country-inspired solo song.
The song came as a result of a wild weekend John Lennon and Harry Nilsson spent together in Los Angeles in 1974. In the book All We Are Saying, John Lennon told author David Sheff, “[It was done] just to write a song.” “You know, ‘Seein’ as we’re stuck in this bottle of vodka together, we might as well try and do something,” Lennon added.
Nilsson is known for his Great American Songbook and singer/songwriter folk style. Hence, it is no surprise that Lennon and Nilsson mustered up something awfully American and somewhat country. Besides the presence of the steel guitar in the song, the most country aspect of the tune is its lyrics. According to Nilsson, Lennon’s goal was to create an entirely American song.
Nilsson attested to the fact stating, “When [Lennon] was writing ‘Old Dirt Road’… he said, ‘Harry, what’s a good Americanism,” per the BBC. In addition to the title, other lines encompassing Lennon’s “Americanism” include Trying to shovel smoke with a pitchfork in the wind and It’s better than a mudslide, mama, when the dry spell come.
Source: Peter Burditt/americansongwriter.com
Paul McCartney‘s long, storied recording career has included forays into just about every style of music you could possibly imagine. On the 1972 single “C Moon,” recorded with the earliest incarnation of his band Wings, he lovingly tackled reggae.
McCartney played it light in a lyrical sense with the song, even creating his own lingo with the title phrase. “C Moon” hit the Top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic, despite having to overcome obstacles caused by “Hi Hi Hi,” the track with which it was paired as a double A-sided single. In the Key of “C”
When Paul McCartney emerged to make music again following the breakup of The Beatles in 1970, he seemed determined to do so in a relaxed, off-the-cuff fashion, perhaps to temper the expectations of fans and critics. Both his first solo album (McCartney) and his first album with Wings (Wild Life) were somewhat ramshackle affairs, free of excessive fussing when it came to the writing and recording.
McCartney also seemed determined to broaden his horizons in the types of music he was going to make. While he had dabbled lightly in reggae with The Beatles (“Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” features hints of it), he went all-in on “C Moon.” It was a trip to Jamaica with wife Linda that helped light his fuse, as he explained in the book Wingspan: Paul McCartney’s Band on the Run:
“We both loved the music and going to Jamaica became our big ambition. When we did, we really fell in love with it: the country, the people, the music, the lifestyle, the weather. We spent weeks there, soaking up a lot of reggae—it was the start of rap but they used to call it toasting. There was a radio station called RJR that played reggae all day long, and a little shop in Montego Bay called Tony’s Record Store where we used to sift through all the 45s.”
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
Richard Starkey, born in Liverpool and known throughout the world as Ringo Starr, is the constant reminder that The Beatles loved each other, respected each other, and worked like dogs to make good music. “Every generation listens to the Beatles. It’s fantastic. The remastering, for me, was great because you can hear the drums, really hear what was played, not so boom, boom, boom… I still love the tracks. There was a lot of energy. We realized ‘we’re working here,’ you know, we’re not partying down while doing the tracks. We did that occasionally, and the track was always shit. But we went in and we did our best,” says Starr, 84, in the room of a luxury London hotel, where he has locked himself away to launch the promotion of his new album, Look Up, which will go on sale on January 10.
Starr’s latest record consists of 11 country songs written mostly by T. Bone Burnett, Bob Dylan’s guitarist during the 1970s, and a composer and producer with several Grammys under his belt. This is not the first album of the genre released by the former Beatles drummer: over 50 years ago he composed and produced the album Beaucoups of Blues.
And anyone who has heard the few Beatles songs Ringo sang, such as What Goes On, Act Naturally (“We’re going to make a film about a sad, lonely man. All I have to do is act naturally”), or even Octopus’s Garden, can sense a cowboy soul in the rhythm and in his voice.
Source: Rafa de Miguel/english.elpais.com
The Beatles’ Abbey Road is one of the bestselling albums that is still present on the Billboard charts. The classic has already sold more than 6.2 million copies in the U.S. alone since its release decades ago, but that doesn’t mean Americans are done with the set.
Abbey Road is on the rise on every ranking it appears on in the U.S. at the moment. The blockbuster climbs on five different tallies, thanks largely to a sizable uptick in purchases—one that is especially notable given not just how long the title has been available, but also how well it’s already sold.
In the past tracking period, Abbey Road was purchased by 7,750 Americans. That sum is up by more than 42% from last frame, according to Luminate. That’s a huge surge for a half-century-old release, regardless of the title or the band behind it.
Total consumption of the album also increased, but not by nearly as much. Including streams and sales of individual tunes featured on its tracklist, Abbey Road moved nearly 11,900 equivalent units last week. That’s a growth of almost 22% from the frame before, when it didn’t quite manage 10,000 units.
Source: Hugh McIntyre/forbes.com
Dark Horse and its subsequent tour arrived 50 years ago amid a period of conflict and uncertainty for George Harrison.
His first marriage and Apple Records were crumbling. Meanwhile, Harrison had been led away from his spiritual center by the pressures of starting his own label, also called Dark Horse, and mounting the first U.S. tour by any member of the Beatles since their final 1966 jaunt.
A bout of laryngitis and Harrison’s determination to expose American audiences to Ravi Shankar as a co-headliner only made matters worse for some critics. Harrison and a touring band featuring talents like late-period Beatles collaborator Billy Preston, ace sessions drummer Jim Keltner, Tom Scott and Robben Ford bore the brunt of their disappointment.
“George liked people who could play different styles of music,” Robben Ford tells us, in an exclusive Something Else! Sitdown. “He said I did a good job of working with them. I was surprised by that, because I felt out of my depth, honestly, in some ways. It was very intense.”
Released in December 1974, Dark Horse barely cracked the U.S. Top 5, and didn’t even chart in the U.K. – a huge let down after two chart-topping albums. The title track single only reached No. 15.
Source:Jimmy Nelson/somethingelsereviews.com
The Beatles released “Ticket to Ride” as the first single from their 1965 movie/album Help!, and the song continued their unstoppable run of success. It topped the charts in the U.S., the UK, and several other ports of call.
You might not realize, however, the song could easily have been called “Ticket to Ryde” had John Lennon and Paul McCartney revealed the initial inspiration that got the ball rolling. The song’s lyrics then deviated from that source to depict a tale of heartbreak and woe.
That’s the “Ticket”
For many years, it was assumed John Lennon wrote the bulk of “Ticket to Ride.” Lennon gave thorough interviews both right after The Beatles broke up in 1970 and right before his death in 1980, in which he dissected the provenance of many of the band’s songs. He claimed in both to have penned the song.
But it’s important to remember that Lennon was rifling through those questions rapid-fire, which didn’t leave him a lot of room for nuance. In later years, Paul McCartney stepped forward and suggested that while Lennon might have had the original idea for songs like “Ticket to Ride,” Macca was very much in the mix contributing words and music.
In his interviews, Lennon explained he had intended “Ticket to Ride” to be a bit heavier in a musical sense than what the band had been doing at that time. That heaviness seems to have been shorn away somewhat as the song was recorded, although you can hear remnants of it in Ringo Starr’s battering drum pattern.
Many urban legends popped up over the years concerning what The Beatles meant by saying that the girl in the song had a “Ticket to Ride.” McCartney set everyone straight when talking about the song in his book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present:
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
In 2027, a wildly ambitious cinematic project is slated to come to life: four biopics about The Beatles, each focusing on one member of the Fab Four. The casting is already tantalizing, with Paul Mescal apparently set to play Paul McCartney and Barry Keoghan confirmed to be taking the role of Ringo Starr.
While details are scarce, it seems likely that these films will offer something Rashomon-like—four perspectives on the same iconic story.
The idea of a Beatles Cinematic Universe is exciting. But what if it didn’t stop there? What if these films laid the groundwork for something even bigger: a Rock Cinematic Universe?
Allow me to propose Hollywood’s next blockbuster phenomenon: an interconnected web of movies chronicling the history of rock music, with a shared cast and storylines crossing over from one film to the next. Modeled after the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Rock Cinematic Universe (RCU) would capture the genre’s sprawling history.
Fans of the MCU love a good crossover event, and rock music has plenty of those to offer. The Beatles' history alone is full of thrilling intersections. It’s conceivable that Roy Orbison will appear in the story, in scenes devoted to their 1963 UK tour; Phil and Ronnie Spector may pop up in the mid-60s; Jimi Hendrix will potentially wow Paul and George with his blistering performance of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” at London’s Saville Theatre. Each of these figures could spin off into films of their own, creating a sprawling narrative web.
Roy Orbison’s story might naturally lead to the tale of Jeff Lynne and the Electric Light Orchestra. Phil and Ronnie Spector could open the door to a film about the songwriting duo Lieber and Stoller. Jimi Hendrix’s story could bring in Pete Townshend and The Who, complete with the infamous coin toss at Monterey Pop Festival. These interconnected films wouldn’t just explore isolated figures but would illuminate the relationships, collaborations and inspirations have made rock thrive.
Source: Darryn King/forbes.com
Billy Sheehan is widely considered one of the premiere rock bassists, with a resume that includes being an original member of Mr. Big, The Winery Dogs, and David Lee Roth’s solo band.
Lindsay Ell Talks Being Shania Twain's Lead Guitar Player & 'Love Myself'
As talented a bassist as Sheehan is, for him, no one in the rock world surpasses Paul McCartney. Billy shared his respect for the iconic Beatle during a recent interview on The Mistress Carrie Podcast.
During their conversation, host Mistress Carrie asked Sheehan if he could name a song with what he’d consider the best bass line.
Sheehan’s initial response was the 1966 Yardbirds song “Lost Woman,” which featured Paul Samwell-Smith on bass. He then moved on to pour praise on McCartney’s playing.
“Almost anything McCartney did is just brilliant,” he declared. “Some people don’t get it. I think if [you] give me enough time, I’ll get them to get it.”
Sheehan continued, “I would be happy to explain to anyone why Paul McCartney is probably the greatest … really, just a really great, great player.”
The 71-year-old musician then drew positive comparisons between McCartney and lauded Motown session bassist James Jamerson.
Source: Matt Friedlander/americansongwriter.com
If you asked fans of either band, they could probably tell you a few key differences between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Though they are somewhat cut from the same cloth–both having blues inspirations and being apart of the “British Invasion”–they stand in contrast as well.
According to Keith Richards, there is one main difference that set the two bands apart. Find out what that is, below.
Well, I never kept a dollar past sunset
It always burned a hole in my pants
Never made a school mama happy
Never blew a second chance, oh no
I need a love to keep me happy
I need a love to keep me happy
Baby, baby, keep me happy
Baby, baby, keep me happy
Before digging deep enough to get into conversations about sound and attitude, the Stones and the Beatles have apparent differences that you can see at first glance. According to Richards, he marveled at the fact the Beatles had four unique singers while the Stones only had one, Mick Jagger. It’s something even Paul McCartney has marveled at in the past, despite having lived it first hand.
“I remember Keith Richards saying to me, ‘You had four singers. We only had one,’” McCartney once recalled. “Little things like that will set me off and I think, ‘Wow.’ That is pretty uncanny. And writers. Not just singers, but writers.”
Source: Alex Hopper/americansongwriter.com
