Beatles News
The contribution to music from John Lennon and Paul McCartney can never be truly overstated. The partnership spawned some of the world’s most cherished songs and later emboldened the pair to seek solo careers. But what was the final song the pair truly wrote alongside one another?
‘Lennon & McCartney’ is a marking so ubiquitous on the back of The Beatles’ first records that you would expect the Fab Four to be a duo. While George Harrison and Ringo Starr’s own proficiency with a pen grew with time, for a short while all the songs were either Paul’s or John’s.
During the band’s frenzied early moments, attached to one another by the almighty touring schedule, Lennon and McCartney created songs side by side. They worked on melodies together, they exchanged lyrical ideas, they harmonised on vocals and either played piano or guitar for one another. But soon enough that naturally came to an end.
Source: faroutmagazine.co.uk
Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles, the new work by Kenneth Womack, dean of humanities and social sciences at Monmouth University, and veteran Beatles historian, is essentially two books. The first half is a fascinating look at the Fab Four’s swan song, whether you’re a general Beatles fan, a musician, someone fascinated by the record production process, or all of the above. The second half is a much darker look at the world’s most influential musical act of the 1960s imploding. While Beatles obsessives like myself know the tale of how Abbey Road was written and produced fairly well, Womack manages to uncover several surprising details.
Source: By Ed Driscoll /pjmedia.com
Imagine, if you can, a storied British institution under siege. After years of joy and prosperity, the institution faces a challenge from an outsider — a foreigner — with the potential to topple the colossus.
That might sound like the saga of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry in recent years, but it’s only the latest example. Fifty years earlier, John Lennon and his soon-to-be wife Yoko Ono dealt with a similar reaction from the British tabloid press during the latter days of The Beatles.
After a couple years of that treatment, John and Yoko did what they had to do — they left England for good. If you read what John said about the British press, it isn’t hard to see how he came to that decision.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Bob Dylan. The Cure. Alice Cooper. Roger Daltrey. Brian Wilson. Def Leppard, Dr John. Kiss. Chrissie Hynde. Jeff Lynne. Heart. Steve Miller. Perry Farrell. Robin Zander & Rick Nielsen. Sammy Hagar. Paul Rodgers.
There are tribute albums and then there are tribute albums. The Art Of McCartney, a tribute to former Beatle Paul McCartney, is one of the latter, with a cast of performers that reads like a "who's who" of A-list rock stardom.
Launched in 2014, the super-deluxe version of the album (triple CD, quadruple coloured vinyl, DVD, 64-page 12” hardback book, etc) originally retailed at £240, but right now it's on sale for less than £90 at Amazon.
Source: By Scott Munro/loudersound.com
There are a few jams in the history of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame performances which will live long in the memory for the musicians who share the stage. But surely there’s no bigger performance than this jam session on ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ featuring George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger and a plethora of stars all take the stage.
There have been some incredible moments in Rock Hall’s long history, but none rank as highly as the institution’s third-ever event. That night saw The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, and the Drifters all be inducted into the quickly filling mantle of music.
While The Beatles were being inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1988, not all the surviving members of the iconic band would attend the event. George Harrison and Ringo Starr would arrive at the show without Paul McCartney. The singer boycotted the event as the result of ongoing business disputes.
Source: faroutmagazine.co.uk
What I find strange about growing old isn’t that I’ve got older. Not that the youthful me from the past has, without my realizing it, aged. What catches me off guard is, rather, how people from the same generation as me have become elderly, how all the pretty, vivacious girls I used to know are now old enough to have a couple of grandkids. It’s a little disconcerting—sad, even. Though I never feel sad at the fact that I have similarly aged.
I think what makes me feel sad about the girls I knew growing old is that it forces me to admit, all over again, that my youthful dreams are gone forever. The death of a dream can be, in a way, sadder than that of a living being.
There’s one girl—a woman who used to be a girl, I mean—whom I remember well. I don’t know her name, though. And, naturally, I don’t know where she is now or what she’s doing. What I do know about her is that she went to the same high school as I did, and was in the same year (since the badge on her shirt was the same color as mine), and that she really liked the Beatles.
Source: Haruki Murakami/newyorker.com
It was 56 years ago; nearly 73 million people were watching when “The Ed Sullivan Show” went on the air and The Beatles took over music forever.
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, fresh from Liverpool, England, kicked off the first of three Sunday appearances on the variety on Feb. 9, 1964.
A screaming crowd and national television audience watched that first show, and the yelling did not subside as the quartet sang five songs over two sets.
Here are five fun facts about that smashing debut:
Source: Dayton Daily News
It was 55 years ago; nearly 73 million people were watching when “The Ed Sullivan Show” went on the air and The Beatles took over music forever.
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, fresh from Liverpool, England, kicked off the first of three Sunday appearances on the variety on Feb. 9, 1964.
A screaming crowd and national television audience watched that first show, and the yelling did not subside as the quartet sang five songs over two sets.
Here are five fun facts about that smashing debut:
PLAYLIST: The Beatles opened their set with “All My Loving,” “Till There Was You,” and “She Loves You." Later in the show, the band returned to play “I Saw Her Standing There” and ended their set with their No. 1 hit, “I Want to Hold Your Hand." All but “She Loves You" would appear on the group’s first album for Capitol Records.
‘Here Comes the Sun’, the iconic song most synonymous with guitarist George Harrison, featured on The Beatles 1969 album Abbey Road and is remembered as one of the band’s biggest hits.
Harrison, who wrote the song in early 1969 while staying at the country house of his friend Eric Clapton, was enduring a difficult period of his life when he created the track having recently quit The Beatles and had been arrested for marijuana possession.
“‘Here Comes the Sun’ was written at the time when Apple was getting like school, where we had to go and be businessmen: ‘Sign this’ and ‘sign that’,” Harrison later wrote in his autobiography. “Anyway, it seems as if winter in England goes on forever, by the time spring comes you really deserve it. So one day I decided I was going to sag off Apple and I went over to Eric Clapton’s house.”
Source: Lee Thomas-Mason/faroutmagazine.co.uk
In the mid-’60s, George Harrison’s explorations into Indian music had a marked impact on the sound of The Beatles. From the opening notes of “Norwegian Wood” to the very Eastern “Within You Without You,” George’s use of the sitar and tambura made the Fab Four a more interesting band.
But that shift in focus had its side effects. The time George spent learning the sitar took time away from his guitar playing beginning in 1965. Looking back in ’77, he said he barely played the guitar for about three years.
During that stretch, George had to look on as Paul McCartney grabbed the solo on “Taxman” (a song George wrote in ’66) and “Good Morning, Good Morning” (’67). But after his return from India in ’68, George once again focused on the guitar.
Source: cheatsheet.com
