Beatles News
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
In 1948 the HMT Windrush arrived in Britain carrying people from the Caribbean.
They had been invited by the government to fill the skills and labour shortage in the aftermath of WW2, leaving behind livelihoods, families and friends to travel across the Atlantic. Of those original passengers, it is estimated that around 68 men came to live and settle in Liverpool.
Many married local women and started families in Liverpool, bringing unique influences to the city, influences that could be said to have changed the world. One of those men was Harold Phillips, also known as Lord Woodbine, an RAF veteran from Trinidad.
He joined the war effort aged 14 after lying about his age and using his brother's passport.
In 1948, he arrived in the UK on board the Windrush, where he went on to create a lasting legacy which shaped the music and culture of not just Liverpool but also the rest of the world - helping to take The Beatles to Hamburg and even smuggling an under-age George Harrison into the German city.
Source: Lisa Rand/liverpoolecho.co.uk
One of the most prolific and potent artists of all time, The Beatles delivered 13 full-length records for their fans. The band would grow and evolve from their boyband roots to something entirely more special, transcending genres, music, and fandom to become one of the best bands of all time.
The Beatles had such a strong career it’s not unusual to find fans have passionate affections for a particular moment in their career trajectory, or a particular era, let alone a particular album. But what was George Harrison’s favourite Beatles album of all time?
The quiet Beatle as he was often, and affectionately, known may be more accurately described as the too-often-overlooked Beatle. One of the finer songwriters of his generation with tracks like ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ and ‘Here Comes The Sun’ cements him in the pop music pantheon. It’s a place that is too often forgotten about.
Source:Jack Whatley/faroutmagazine.co.uk
John Lennon met Yoko Ono in 1966 and soon left his first wife Cynthia Lennon and started up a relationship with the artist. Shortly after they were married in 1969, he told The Beatles he no longer wanted to be part of the band. His romance with Ono is often the focus of The Beatles fans’ anger regarding the group’s split, with many blaming her for drawing him away from mainstream music and into more experimental endeavours.
During an interview with Howard Stern last year, Paul McCartney opened up on the divide between him and his childhood friend Lennon following the disintegration of the band.
On the period of time during which he and Lennon exchanged jibes through their solo music, the Wings star laughed: “We were writing songs at each other, weaponising songs.”
However, he went on to admit his relief that they reconciled their feud before Lennon was fatally shot in 1980.
Source: Minnie Wright/express.co.uk
At times, John Lennon would get annoyed when people read too much into The Beatles’ music. When he wrote “Glass Onion,” he said he was having a laugh at the expense of fans who would take a song and “play it backwards and stand on your head and all that.”
But John wasn’t above reading into lyrics — even Beatles lyrics. In one case, he said Paul McCartney had Yoko Ono on his mind when he sang, “Get back to where you once belonged.” (Paul said he wrote it about the fictional Jojo and Loretta.)
John also had ideas about the meaning behind another late classic by Paul: “Hey Jude.” In the song, when Paul sings that a man who’s found his ideal woman should “go and get her,” John took it as a reference to the new relationship in his (John’s) life.
Source: cheatsheet.com
