Beatles News
The Beatles left an indelible mark on both music and television, shaping culture in ways that still resonate today. Their arrival in the United States in February 1964 sparked what became known as “Beatlemania,” a movement that not only redefined the music world but also influenced the broader cultural landscape.
The documentary Beatles ’64 offers a fascinating glimpse into this groundbreaking era. Featuring rarely-seen archival footage and heartfelt interviews, the film dives deep into the band’s ascent to superstardom. It covers their electrifying first visit to America, the hysteria they inspired, and the unique bond shared by the four young men who captivated millions.
Paul McCartney recalled this incredible time with vivid detail, reflecting on the band’s un
forgettable appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. That performance etched their names in history, blending music and television in a way that had never been done before. (Click on the media bar below to hear Paul McCartney)
Beatles ’64 is streaming on Disney+
Source: Hollywood Outbreak
The Beatles are arguably the greatest band of all time, releasing memorable music and marking historic milestones until their unexpected breakup in 1970.
The four musicians that comprised The Beatles — John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — were known as “The Fab Four.” They exploded onto the scene in the U.K. in 1962 before reaching incomprehensible levels of popularity and acclaim when they visited America in 1964 — covered in the Beatles ‘64 documentary released on Nov. 29 — culturally referred to as “Beatlemania.”
After ceasing touring in 1966, The Beatles released Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band — one of the most critically and commercially successful albums of all time —in 1967, but tragedy struck that year. Their manager Brian Epstein, who previously handled much of The Beatles’ business affairs, died.
In the following years, the band experimented with their sound, creating more classic albums like Abbey Road and Let it Be. Outside of the studio, Lennon married Yoko Ono in 1969 and began bringing her to recording sessions, which caused tension.
These events and growing creative differences amongst the group contributed to the breakup. Each Beatle had differing reasons as to why exactly they broke up, but a constant theme was that they were going in opposite directions, as Starr summed up in an interview on Private Sessions in February 2008.
“It was a bit of a drag it broke up even though we all wanted it. We had been working steady for eight years and we’d been these brothers,” Starr said. “We all wanted it. We’d all grown up a little more, and we weren’t prepared to put in the time and energy for each other.”
Source: Skyler Trepel/people.com
Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney has said it is a "huge honour" to appear on a new commemorative coin unveiled by the Royal Mint.
Their new coin collection marks the first of its kind, designed to honour Sir Paul's ground-breaking career.
But this is no penny (lane), this is a £5 coin that features The Beatles singer's iconic magic piano as well as references to his career, including piano notes personally chosen by him, a Höfner violin bass guitar and the Wings logo.
Sir Paul said: “It’s not anything I would have ever expected to happen when I was a kid."
The Royal Mint A silver coin with a rainbow design and Paul McCartney's signature rests on a copy of handwritten lyrics The Royal Mint
McCartney said it was a "huge honour" to have a coin made for him. And while money can't buy you love, it can buy you one of these coins, the cheapest being £15.50, with some coming in at more than £100 for the more rare or coloured coins.
Early next year, The Royal Mint will offer fans a chance to own a signed, gold edition of the coin - if money is what they want. The bespoke gold coin weighs 5kg (11lb) and took over 250 hours to make, including three days of hand polishing.
It was signed by McCartney during his 2024 Got Back tour in Paris and will be auctioned alongside four silver 5kg editions. The Royal Mint A silver coin with rainbow design being heldThe Royal Mint. The coin is inspired by McCartney's use of pennies as guitar picks
Inspired by his use of pennies as guitar picks in the early days of his career, Royal Mint has also created a special edition plectrum shaped version of the coin to gift to Sir Paul.
Source: Gemma Sherlock/bbc.com
Over Thanksgiving weekend in 2021, Beatles fans settled in for Get Back, Peter Jackson’s eight-hour epic that transported viewers back to the weeks leading up to the band’s famous rooftop concert in January 1969. Though more lighthearted than the troubled reputation of the period would indicate, the docuseries was colored by the irrefutable fact that it concludes with the last live performance the Beatles would ever give. Even the happy moments were made bittersweet with the knowledge that, despite appearances, it was nearing the end.
This Thanksgiving, fans received the perfect cinematic companion piece. Beatles ‘64, now streaming on Disney+, bookending the group’s story by providing the ultimate insider's look at the birth of Beatlemania in the United States. Executive produced by Martin Scorsese, the film is directed by his longtime editor David Tedeschi, a crucial collaborator on his string of essential latter-day rock docs examining the work of Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and George Harrison. “I think one of the reasons they chose us to make this is because we're from New York,” Tedeschi tells PEOPLE. “And it's a very New York story.”
That was, of course, where the Fab Four first made landfall on Feb. 7, 1964. The hero's welcome they received at Kennedy International Airport would echo throughout the city, country and ultimately the world. It’s only fitting that the Nov. 24 premiere of Beatles ‘64 was held in the heart of the Big Apple. A-listers like Emma Stone, Chris Rock, James Taylor, and Elvis Costello were on hand at Manhattan’s recently completed Hudson Square Theater to celebrate alongside Olivia Harrison, Sean Ono Lennon, and an ebullient Paul McCartney. Ethan Hawke moderated a post-screening Q&A with the director and Scorsese, who recalled how hearing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” for the first time on his morning walk to NYU’s Washington Square College left him so mesmerized that he was late to class.
Source: Jordan Runtagh/people.com
The Beatles are always present on the music charts in the United Kingdom in one capacity or another. The band remains perhaps the most famous ever in the nation, even more than half a century after they split. While they often fill one or two spaces on a ranking, or perhaps a few tallies, this frame has turned out to be especially huge for the rockers.
This time around, The Beatles debut two different projects on the charts in their home country. Both collections start their time on three lists apiece, and these wins don’t even manage to tell the full story of their ongoing success on the U.K. rankings.
1964 US Albums in Mono is the top performer between their two debuts. The box set features eight LPs in a sizable offering from the group, which focuses on their earliest work. The seven albums represented were slated for release in the U.S., and only in mono, in the mid-’60s, and now they’ve been pressed once again on vinyl using the original tapes.
That collection of full-lengths debuts inside the top 40 on all three U.K.-based lists it reaches this frame. 1964 US Albums in Mono lands highest on the Official Vinyl Albums ranking, where it enters at No. 14, only missing the top 10 by a few spaces. The same gathering of projects is also new to the Official Physical Albums (No. 35) and Official Albums Sales (No. 37) charts.
One of the albums featured in that box set, Meet the Beatles, is also new to the same number of rosters, and it lands on all three tallies that 1964 US Albums in Mono settles on for the first time this week. Meet the Beatles launches at No. 19 on the Official Vinyl Albums list, and that turned out to be the only top 40 placement for the title. The fan favorite also reaches the Official Physical Albums (No. 42) and Official Albums Sales (No. 46) as well as a standalone release.
Source: Hugh McIntyre/forbes.com
The Beatles rehearse at the Deauville Hotel, Miami Beach, Florida, for their February 16, 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Harrison is playing his second Gretsch Country Gentleman, as evident by the lever-style mute that can be seen to the treble side of the tremolo unit.
This past year saw the unraveling of one Beatles guitar mystery when Paul McCartney’s first Höfner bass was discovered more than 50 years after it was stolen. That guitar had been the focus of the Lost Bass Project, which tracked down the Höfner in the loft of a family home in East Sussex, England.
But the discovery of McCartney’s 1961 Höfner has opened up a new mystery in the world of Beatles guitar gear: Was George Harrison’s Gretsch Country Gentleman electric guitar really destroyed in a 1965 mishap during the Beatles’ Scotland tour? Or was the victim actually another guitar?
According to Beatles history, Harrison’s Country Gent — his second — was smashed to pieces on the evening of December 2 as the group journeyed from London in their Austin Princess limousine for a December 3 performance at Glasgow’s Odeon Cinema. Beatles chauffeur Alf Bicknell was left to transport two guitars after roadie Mal Evans left with the Beatles gear van ahead of the group.
As Bicknell told Andy Babiuk in Beatles Gear, the guitars were “a Rickenbacker and a Country Gentleman.” He further noted that it was “very rare for me to carry anything like this.”
Indeed it was, since his car was already carrying the four Beatles and their road manager, Neil Aspinall. With no room for the guitars inside the vehicle, Bicknell strapped them to the back of the car and drove off into the growing darkness.
Source: Christopher Scapelliti/guitarplayer.comguitarplayer.com
Sean Lennon has rejected the “assumptions” made about his parents, artist Yoko Ono and the late John Lennon, over their “Lost Weekend” separation.
Sean, also a musician, is preparing to mark the 44th anniversary of the Beatles star’s death in New York in 1980.
In an interview with BBC Radio 6 Music about the recently released, Grammy-nominated expanded box set edition of John’s 1973 album, Mind Games, Sean discussed the influence his mother had on his father’s work.
At the time he was writing his fourth solo album, Mind Games, John was in the middle of his famous 18-month separation from Ono, a period referred to as the “Lost Weekend”.
“A lot of people said like, ‘Yoko wasn’t around for this record, why are they featuring her in the booklet’ or something,” Sean began. “And I think there’s a lot of history, there’s a lot of assumptions made about that time period because they were sort of on their way towards that famous separation that people call the Lost Weekend.
“But the truth is, even when they were apart they were always talking, so I don’t think they ever really broke up, all his stuff was still in the apartment with my mum. It’s not like they had a real separation. And on top of it, all my dad was thinking about was her.”
Source: Roisin O'Connor/the-independent.com
The documentary Beatles ‘64 takes a look at the band’s arrival in the United States in 1964, and among the songs and nostalgia, there’s a pretty dark and sad part in which John Lennon foresaw his own death. Directed by David Tedeschi and produced by Martin Scorsese, Beatles ‘64 was released on Disney+ in November 2024. The film features footage shot by Albert and David Maysles during the Beatles' visit to the United States, which was originally for the 1964 documentary What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A., along with interviews with fans, producers, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr.
Beatles ‘64 is a look into the band’s feelings and reactions to arriving in the United States, their historic performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, the fans’ intense welcome and reactions to the band’s arrival and presence, and the overall atmosphere as the country had just gone through the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The latter is mentioned multiple times throughout the documentary, and it had a big impact on the band, particularly John Lennon, making way for Beatles ‘64’s saddest part.
Beatles ‘64 goes back and forth between footage from the Beatles’ three-week visit to the US in 1964, some of the aftermath back in England, and interviews with the surviving band members and other people. The documentary offers a close look at the band in their hotel, bus, and more, showing a bit of their personalities, sense of humor, the dynamic between them, their thoughts on their visit to the US, and more. Adding to this is the commentary of the different guests, and one of them makes a sad reveal about John Lennon.
Source: Adrienne Tyler/screenrant.com
Paul McCartney is back in fashion. When, after a three-hour set, McCartney walked off stage at Glastonbury in 2022, the audience seemed to be expressing a country’s gratitude, as 20 days earlier those on the Mall for the Platinum Jubilee celebrations had to the Queen. For Elizabeth II, it was her penultimate public appearance. McCartney, though, is back in December on a UK tour: still hungry at the age of 82 for the appreciation, still, by his sheer virtuosity, wishing to settle scores.
Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary Get Back on the Beatles’ January 1969 sessions, the Glastonbury concert and the 2023 Beatles single “Now and Then” are all part of McCartney’s attempt to re-elevate the Beatles into the mythical realm, with the songwriting duo of Lennon and McCartney at its heart. His implicit antagonist is still Yoko Ono, who has spent the four and a half decades since her husband’s death insisting that the spirit of John Lennon was bigger than the Beatles.
Since Get Back came out at least, McCartney has been winning. The documentary shows emphatically that when the love between Lennon and McCartney was supposedly obliterated, it was instead very much alive. It is evident in the looks Lennon and McCartney exchange in the first song they practise, “I Have a Feeling”. At the Glastonbury concert, McCartney sang this number in the encore as a virtual duet with Lennon. There being no footage of George Harrison’s lunchtime row with Lennon on the seventh day of the sessions, Jackson has the Beatles’ lead guitarist quit the band after emotionally crumbling as he watched Lennon and McCartney sing “Two of Us” to each other. In perhaps the most powerful scene, Lennon and McCartney work through their anguish in a secret code of wordplay. Lennon’s eye-contact is intense as he spills out his need to connect; McCartney keeps turning his head away and insists that what they require is “a schedule of work”. In this story, Lennon and McCartney appear to be taking steps beyond the wounds they inflicted on each other in 1968 in India and the making of the White Album. It is the imminent appointment of the American mogul Allen Klein as the Beatles’ business manager – despite McCartney’s bitter opposition – that looms after the cameras have stopped rolling, and which will tear them apart.
Source: Helen Thompson/newstatesman.com
Unprecedented excitement and hysteria led thousands of fans to John F Kennedy International Airport in New York City on February 7, 1964, with placards and banners to welcome The Beatles and jumpstart their American invasion.
The rock band consisted of Sir Paul McCartney, 82, John Lennon, who died aged 40 from gunshot wounds, George Harrison, who died aged 58 following a battle with cancer, and 84-year-old Sir Richard Starkey – also known professionally as Ringo Starr – who all originated from Liverpool. “On that plane coming to the United States, they had no idea if anyone would be waiting for them, or the degree to which Capitol Records, writers and reporters did not want them to succeed. They wanted them to fail and worked against them,” says Beatles ‘64 director David Tedeschi, known for Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story By Martin Scorsese, Pretend It’s A City, and Vinyl.
“At Carnegie Hall – their second American concert – the establishment was appalled when they heard the rock and roll music these kids were playing in the hallowed halls and banned their promoter [Sid Bernstein].”
Beatles ‘64 is a new documentary on Disney+ produced by Academy Award-winning American filmmaker Martin Scorsese, 82, who directed Shutter Island and The Wolf Of Wall Street, and producer Margaret Bodde who has worked with Scorsese on Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese, and The 50 Year Argument.
It captures the electrifying moment of The Beatles’ first visit to America. It features never-seen-before footage of the band and their legion of young fans who helped fuel their ascendence. The Grammy, Academy Award – for Best Original Song Score for the 1970 documentary film Let It Be – and Ivor Novello Award-winning rock band, who were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in their first year of eligibility – 1988 – achieved record-breaking levels of critical and commercial success.
Source: Yolanthe Fawehinmi/yorkshirepost.co.uk
