Beatles News
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
By the time the public heard "The Long and Winding Road," the Beatles were broken up.
The song first showed up on the Let It Be album, which came out on May 8, 1970, in the U.K.; ten days later, it was released in the U.S. Between those dates, a 45 of "The Long and Winding Road" arrived on May 11. It marked the final single released by the band, which had split up on April 10.
To distraught fans the song sounded like a requiem, a last gasp and a summation of the past seven years. Five decades later, it still sounds like a fitting close of the Beatles' career, a mournful and meditative song about looking back while looking forward. And, true to its title, "The Long and Winding Road" had a complicated history before finally making it on record.
Source: ultimateclassicrock.com
The Shining is Stephen King's masterwork of horror, which makes peace-loving John Lennon's influence on the novel all the more shocking. Not only is The Shining one of King's most respected and well-known works, but it's also one of his scariest, and it's hard to imagine how a John Lennon song had such a profound impact on it.
The Shining is one of Stephen King's most respected and well-known works, and it's no secret King is inspired by music. In fact, he often quotes song lyrics as epigraphs at the beginnings of his books. In interviews, King has shared how he listens to music while he writes his books. Although he does this mostly for his own entertainment, sometimes a particular song or lyric will find its way into his work, and in this case, it was a John Lennon song.
Source: Keith Deininger/screenrant.com
Paul McCartney said he learned “everything he knows” from Little Richard in a tribute to the late rock legend posted on social media early morning. Richard, who shared stages with the Beatles early in their career and whose songs the group covered extensively, died of cancer Saturday at the age of 87.
“From ‘Tutti Frutti’ to ‘Long Tall Sally’ to ‘Good Golly, Miss Molly’ to ‘Lucille’, Little Richard came screaming into my life when I was a teenager,” McCartney wrote. “I owe a lot of what I do to Little Richard and his style; and he knew it. He would say, ‘I taught Paul everything he knows.’ I had to admit he was right.”
The young Beatles performed with Richard at a show during one of their long residencies at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany, which is where the group truly learned their craft.
Source: Jem Aswad /msn.com
Through the past decades, there have been countless incidents of unlikely cameo appearances on records, some of which were secret, some were not, but most of which remain unknown to the listening public, even on songs they’ve heard for years. But it’s time for all the secrets to be out. As we began compiling this, it became apparent that there are more of these than we had expected, and some are famous songs.
Some are not famous at all. Not even close.
But all share that ingredient of having someone unexpected on the record. It’s something that happened sometimes purposely, when an artist or a band invites a musician to contribute.
But it also happened, sometimes, simply because the artist’s inclusion had more to do with proximity than purpose, simply the serendipity of unlikely pathways crossing.
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Yesterday, rock and roll lost an original star in Little Richard. And now Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Ringo Starr have shared fond memories of times with one of their biggest influencers. Both surviving members of the Fab Four shared a snap of The Beatles with Little Richard back in the early sixties on their Instagram accounts.
Sir Paul wrote: “From Tutti Frutti to Long Tall Sally to Good Golly, Miss Molly to Lucille, Little Richard came screaming into my life when I was a teenager.
“I owe a lot of what I do to Little Richard and his style, and he knew it.
“He would say, ‘I taught Paul everything he knows’. I had to admit he was right.
“In the early days of The Beatles, we played with Richard in Hamburg and got to know him.”
Source: George Simpson/express.co.uk
It will come as little surprise that the great David Bowie had a vastly eclectic record collection.
The singer, who was long famed for his eclectic styles and complete commitment to his role as an artist, was always quick to point out his contemporaries who challenged him to complete his best work.
Way back in 2003 the Thin White Duke decided to rake through his 2,500 vinyl record collection to pick out some of his favourite numbers while in conversation with Vanity Fair.
In doing so, Bowie managed to name his top 25 records of all time. Among the list, there are shout outs for the likes for Robert Wyatt, John Lee Hooker, Toots & The Maytals, The Fugs and many more. “There is really no way to do a list of my favourite albums with any rationality. I do only have about 2,500 vinyl,” Bowie said a the time of naming his list.
Source: faroutmagazine.co.uk
