Beatles News
Funny how time flies. June 2 marked the 53rd anniversary of the release of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was also just the 50th anniversary of Let it Be last month. Despite it being the last release it was actually Abbey Road that was their final album. Beatles historian Denny Somach came on my New Jersey 101.5 evening show to talk about it.
"The Beatles were supposed to make a record. They decided, 'let's film it and see what happens,'" Somach said when he called in. "The problem is they were actually watching each other and it was looking like they were getting ready to break up, it finally got done. It was originally called 'Get Back,' then 'Let it Be,' then they stopped everything, then said 'Lets go back into the studio and do an album like we used to,' and they did Abbey Road."
Somach, whose latest book, "A Walk Down Abbey Road," is filled with Beatles anecdotes, talked about the Isley Brothers reaction to the band who would take their "Twist And Shout" to another level.
Source: nj1015.com
“Ebony and Ivory” is each one in all Paul McCartney’s most well-known songs and one in all Stevie Wonder’s. Its message of racial concord stays as related as ever. The music has acquired loads of criticism from Paul and Wonder’s followers over time for supposedly being kitschy, however these followers don’t decry its message.
However, the music was really banned in South Africa within the 1980s. The music itself wasn’t the explanation the South African authorities banned the monitor. The authorities was upset at Wonder for taking a noble stand.
“Ebony and Ivory” was included on Paul’s album Tug of War — an album which options three duets with different artists. Paul instructed NME the album was “cast like [a film], except using musicians instead of actors.” Wonder was actually extra well-known than most of the film stars of the day!
Paul has fond reminiscences of the monitor’s creation. “I wanted Stevie… I was just reaching. It was just, you know, if you could have anyone. We had a good time. We were all out on Montserrat, and we had a good time.”
Source: Jeremy Spirogis/sahiwal.tv
Imagine if you worked at a record label and passed on The Beatles in 1962. Instead of signing the band for next to nothing, you declined because you thought guitar groups were going out of style. Well, that actually happened in the pre-Fab Four days following an audition at Decca (with a guy named Mike Smith, no less).
The Beatles didn’t stay unsigned for long. By June, they’d landed an audition with Parlophone chief George Martin at EMI studios on Abbey Road. And by September ’62 they’d recorded their first single after dropping Pete Best and bringing aboard Ringo Starr.
While it had only been nine months between the failed Decca audition and the recordings for Parlophone, the songs John Lennon and Paul McCartney were writing had gotten much better. “Love Me Do,” the first Beatles single, did very well (No. 17) for a debut track.
Source: cheatsheet.com
If The Beatles were competitive while in the same band together, that wasn’t going to go away once they went solo. Following the group’s April 1970 breakup, each new record by a solo Beatle would prompt comments and critiques from his former bandmates.
The first to go through the ringer was Paul McCartney, whose solo debut McCartney basically came attached to the band’s breakup. When John Lennon weighed in on Paul’s new album, he didn’t hold back. (He actually called it “rubbish.”)
But George Harrison had been the first to field questions about Paul’s new album. On his way through New York just a few weeks after McCartney hit record stores (May ’70), WABC’s Howard Smith asked for his take on the record.
Though he tried to look for the positives in Paul’s debut, George clearly wasn’t in love with the album. And the best he could do was describe it as “fair” while highlighting two tracks he liked.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Express.co.uk readers are thoroughly discerning and have made their decision on which is the best Beatles album. Various magazines have ranked the Beatles albums in the past, and there is often a fight among the top three. However, the winner of our Express.co.uk poll is quite surprising, leaving one of these three completely out of the running.
According to Express.co.uk readers, Revolver is the best Beatles album.
The album received 18 percent of the votes, and truly split fans as they threw their weight behind different albums.
This is quite a surprise, given this album was not the favourite of any Beatles members, most famously John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
In a 1971 interview with Rolling Stone, Lennon said one of his favourite albums was The White Album, and gave a pretty harsh reason as to why.
Source: Jenny Desborough/express.co.uk
It's been well over fifty years since Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band first hit the airwaves on both sides of the Atlantic.
It's been well over fifty years since Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band first hit the airwaves on both sides of the Atlantic.
The frantic screaming of their fans at every concert and the lack of stage monitors made it nearly impossible for them to hear themselves as a musical unit, so they took a step back and rethought the direction in which they were musically heading towards. Ringo Starr often mentioned that were becoming a "bunch of loose musicians" while John Lennon remarked "send out four waxworks ... and that would satisfy the crowds. Beatles concerts have nothing to do with music anymore."
In addition, John's remark "The Beatles are more popular than Jesus" in a London newspaper in March 1966 invited a far-reached public outcry wherever they performed. Their 1966 Philippines tour ended in disaster when they unknowingly snubbed the First Lady Imelda Marcos. By August 1966, The Beatles unanimously felt that their touring days are over, and performed their last concert together at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on 29th August 1966.
Source:Jeffrey D'Silva/thethings.com
George Martin used to quibble over whether "The Ballad of John and Yoko" was even a Beatles song. What's certain, however, is this: Without it, the group might never have rebounded from the crushing disappointment of Let It Be to complete Abbey Road.
"It was hardly a Beatle track," Martin said in Anthology. "It was a kind of thin end of the wedge, as far as they were concerned. John [Lennon] had already mentally left the group anyway, and I think that was just the beginning of it all."
Something happened on April 14, 1969, however, as Lennon and Paul McCartney worked feverishly to complete this new track: The scars from their most recent sessions began to heal. Martin was back at the helm, after stepping aside for Phil Spector on Let It Be. Engineer Geoff Emerick also returned after having departed during sessions for 1968's White Album.
Source: ultimateclassicrock.com
On the late albums by The Beatles, you could tell who wrote which song by who was singing. If Paul McCartney had the lead vocal, there was a 100% chance he wrote the track. (On The White Album, Paul might be playing drums and guitar, too.)
The same applied to songs by John Lennon and George Harrison. Even Ringo Starr sang the one tune he wrote on Abbey Road, the Fab Four’s last recorded album. But in the early days, when John and Paul wrote so many songs “eyeball to eyeball,” it was much trickier.
When then band recorded its first two albums, John and Paul were writing songs that might feature any of the four Beatles singing the lead. And Paul might step in to sing a section even when John wrote the entire track himself.
Source: cheatsheet.com
As a member of the Beatles and as a solo artist, Paul McCartney is a world-class musician. To reach great artistic heights, he was inevitably inspired by other artists. Some fans might be surprised to know that he was inspired by Taylor Swift.
Paul’s latest album is called Egypt station. He presents a song called “Who Cares” which is inspired by Swift’s public life. Plus, Swift has a lot to say about Paul.
How Taylor Swift inspired “Who Cares”
Many of Paul’s most famous post-Beatles songs, from “Silly Love Songs” to “Wonderful Christmastime”, are very dynamic and upbeat. “Who Cares” is no exception. However, it has more of a rock side than most Paul hits from the 80s.
“Who Cares” is not like a Swift song. Despite this, he was directly influenced by Swift and his young fans. Paul told the BBC, “I was actually thinking of Taylor Swift and her relationship with her young fans and how it is sort of a fraternal thing. And I imagined talking to one of these young fans and saying, “Have you ever been bullied? Are you being bullied? »»
Source: oltnews.com
After a career that’s spanned 50 years, Jimmy Buffett has a good idea what his albums should sound like. But after a seven-year gap before his new LP, Life on the Flip Side, which came out today, he had the benefit of receiving advice from Paul McCartney on how to bring the best out of its 14 songs.
Buffett, like many other artists, planned the release to coincide with a tour, but the coronavirus pandemic has shut down those plans, meaning he’s at home during the summer for the first time in 44 years.
“You hear all about people running out of material later in life because a lot of them don't make it this far with a career,” he told Billboard in a new interview. “I’ve heard a lot about writer's block, but I've never had that problem, 'cause I figure as a traveling man and as a nomad, you run into so many more stories than you can possibly imagine, and the source is always there and it always has been for me.”
Source: ultimateclassicrock.com
