Beatles News
In May, McCartney released an expanded, deluxe box-set version of his chart-topping 2018 studio album Egypt Station dubbed the "Explorer's Edition." That same month, the Beatles legend kicked off a new U.S. leg of his ongoing Freshen Up tour.
In August, Sir Paul revealed that he was working on his first stage musical, penning music and lyrics for a production based on the classic 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life in collaboration with Tony-winning playwright Lee Hall.
In early September, McCartney published a new children's book called Hey Grandude!, about a super-cool grandfather who, thanks to his magic compass, is able to take his grandkids on wondrous adventures. That same month, Paul and his Beatles band mate Ringo Starr attended two separate events in London together -- one promoting a new book of photos taken by McCartney late wife, Linda, and the other celebrating the release of the 50th anniversary reissue on the Fab Four's Abbey Road album.
Source: ABC News Radio
Depending on how you look at it and even depending on whom you talk to, The Beatles’ Abbey Road album either was or wasn’t “supposed” to be their final record.Obviously, if you’re just going by the basic timeline of LP releases, the band dropped the Let it Be album in the first part of 1970, several months after Abbey Road, but band enthusiasts know full well that the songs recorded on Let it Be were actually recorded a year earlier, in the early part of 1969 (with Across the Universe even dating back to 1968). The band considered the songs from that recording session not up to their standard and shelved it. In the meantime, John and Yoko got married, George got deep(er) into Hinduism, Paul began seriously contemplating life after the Beatles, and Ringo…
Source: Salome G /cultofwhatever.com
Did The Beatles’ drug use really carry over into the studio? In a 1971 interview, John Lennon scoffed at the idea. “We weren’t all stoned making Rubber Soul because in those days we couldn’t work on pot,” he said. “We never recorded under acid or anything like that.”
Speaking in 2004, Paul McCartney reiterated the point. “It’s fairly easy to overestimate the influence of drugs on The Beatles’ music,” Paul told the Daily Mirror. “The writing was too important for us to mess it up by getting off our heads all the time.”
If you read about The Beatles in the studio — taking a full day to get down a guitar solo and so forth — you can see how adding LSD or some other heavy drugs to the mix wouldn’t have helped. (Speed, which John didn’t mention in the quote above, was a different story.)
Source: cheatsheet.com
While many Beatles songs have interesting stories behind them, some are more intriguing than others. “Get Back,” the band’s 1969 hit single, offers a good example. That track may have been inspired by George Harrison, got Billy Preston a rare album credit, and aroused suspicions in John Lennon.
“Hey Jude,” the band’s smash-hit single from the previous year, is another track with plenty of tales surrounding its making. From the song’s original inspiration (Julian Lennon) to the curse word that got left in the recording, there’s plenty to mull over in this one.
The recording of “Hey Jude” brought enough drama on its own. When Paul McCartney brought the song into the studio, he saw it as a piano ballad that would build up to a raucous singalong. But, being a guitar player, George had ideas about enhancing the song.
Source: cheatsheet.com
English musician and humorist Neil Innes worked closely with two of the biggest cultural juggernauts his nation ever produced — the Beatles and Monty Python’s Flying Circus comedy troupe — yet never became a household name himself, a goal he often espoused in interviews.
“I’ve been very close to people who have had all this terrible fame and renown — it’s really not for me,” Innes, who died on Dec. 29 at age 75, told The Times in 2003. “I’d rather be able to talk to people, my neighbors, or be able to be in a shop and nobody thinks I’m a freak. If that means I only do tiny things here and there, then that’s fine. At least it’s working the way I like it to work.”
Innes died of natural causes at his home in recent years near Toulouse, France, according to a statement released by his family. “We have lost a beautiful, kind, gentle soul whose music and songs touched the heart of everyone and whose intellect and search for truth inspired us all,” the statement said. “He died of natural causes quickly without warning and … without pain.”
Source: By Randy Lewis/latimes.com
After a Hard Day's Night in Liverpool where can Day Trippers rest their heads without breaking the bank?
It's only an hour-long drive away, but bearing in mind everything Manchester's rival city has to offer it's difficult to cram all your sight-seeing into just a day and then hit the town at night.
So the answer lies with the Ibis Styles Hotel on Dale Street, which is located in the heart of the city in the Cavern Quarter - and best of all for music fans and tourists it has a Beatles theme.
Each Ibis Styles hotel has its own unique theme and this one celebrates the Fab Four on every floor.
We were greeted in reception by a drinks table that resembles a retro cassette and cheerful Beatles artwork on the walls, including a large walrus and the lyrics 'Goo goo goo joob.'
Check-in with the friendly staff was fuss-free and mobile as we were invited to take a seat without lingering at a desk (guests also receive a discount on parking at the nearby NCP car park).
Each floor has a Beatles reference and our floor (six) was 'Abbey Road', an appropriate floor to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the iconic Liverpool band's 11th studio album.
Source: Katie Fitzpatrick/manchestereveningnews.co.uk
After a Hard Day's Night in Liverpool where can Day Trippers rest their heads without breaking the bank?
It's only an hour-long drive away, but bearing in mind everything Manchester's rival city has to offer it's difficult to cram all your sight-seeing into just a day and then hit the town at night.
So the answer lies with the Ibis Styles Hotel on Dale Street, which is located in the heart of the city in the Cavern Quarter - and best of all for music fans and tourists it has a Beatles theme.
Each Ibis Styles hotel has its own unique theme and this one celebrates the Fab Four on every floor.
We were greeted in reception by a drinks table that resembles a retro cassette and cheerful Beatles artwork on the walls, including a large walrus and the lyrics 'Goo goo goo joob.'
Check-in with the friendly staff was fuss-free and mobile as we were invited to take a seat without lingering at a desk (guests also receive a discount on parking at the nearby NCP car park).
Each floor has a Beatles reference and our floor (six) was 'Abbey Road', an appropriate floor to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the iconic Liverpool band's 11th studio album.
Source: Katie Fitzpatrick/manchestereveningnews.co.uk
If you went on tour with Led Zeppelin in the 1970s, you had to prepare yourself to be shocked. In the course of a few days, the band could wow 55,000 fans at a stadium, destroy a floor of a luxury hotel, and deal with flocks of teenage groupies. Or the band might do all that on the same night.
On the way to the Zep’s next concert, you might join a singalong aboard the band’s open-layout Starship jet or watch the touring manager pull a gun on a reporter. As Robert Plant once said, “When we do something, we just do it bigger and better than anybody else.”
That held for the practical jokes members of Zeppelin (especially John Bonham) love to pull. If Bonham wasn’t leaving a sleeping John Paul Jones in some hotel hallway, he might be flooding a bandmate’s room with the building fire hose.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Given all the instruments, microphones, and other moving parts used in studios, it’s obvious why recordings don’t come out flawlessly. And The Beatles had plenty of blemishes and other unintended accidents turn up on their albums.
Sometimes, the band was happy to leave in the mistake. A famous example came in the recording of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” during the White Album sessions. In the final verse, Paul McCartney sings that Desmond (rather than Molly) stays at home and “does his pretty face.”
Instead of re-recording the vocal part, Paul decided to leave it in for fans to wonder about. A few weeks after the Fab Four finally wrapped up “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” the band was recording another classic track with a few hitches: “Hey Jude.”
This time around, the problem didn’t come in the lead vocal. However, you can hear background noise (spoken words, in fact) about halfway through the hit single. And you can hear a Beatle drop the f-bomb in that moment.
Source: cheatsheet.com
The Beatles legend Paul McCartney along with his daughter Stella McCartney honours her late mother Linda with a vegetarian Christmas feast each year.
Linda and Paul met in 1967. She converted The Beatles star to vegetarianism,which proved a problem at Christmas because there was no turkey to carve.
"The thing about becoming vegetarian is that some of the things that I saw as traditional male roles -- not wanting to get too sexist or genderist here -- such as barbecuing, and slicing the roast, went," Paul told Britain's The Sunday Times newspaper, reports aceshowbiz.com.
He added: "I wanted something to carve at Christmas!"
To give her husband something to do, Linda, who died of breast cancer in 1998, invented "a macaroni cheese that she shaped and left to set."
Source: By IANS/freepressjournal.in
