Beatles News
Ringo Starr is regarded as talentless by some fans of the Beatles. Others simply feel he didn’t have as much talent as the other three members of the band. Many Beatles fans might be surprised to know that Ringo did not play the drums on the group’s first hit, “Love Me Do.” Here’s why.
Despite what others have said about Ringo, the other Beatles were in awe of his talent. According to The Spectator, Paul McCartney has positive memories of the first time he saw Ringo drumming.
“This was, like, a grown-up musician. I remember the moment, standing there and looking at John and then looking at George, and the look on our faces was like …what is this?” he said. “And that was the moment, that was the beginning, really, of the Beatles.”
Although Paul said the Beatles weren’t really the Beatles until Ringo joined the band, the group’s producer, George Martin, felt differently. He didn’t like the sound Ringo brought the band’s recordings.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Next month marks the 39th anniversary of John Lennon’s death at the hands of gunman Mark David Chapman outside the historic Dakota apartment building in New York City. Lennon fans will be eager to watch Killing John Lennon, “a dramatic psychoanalysis and step-by-step breakdown of the lead-up to one of the most infamous assassinations in history,” said Thomas Gould, Flame’s VP, Content Sales, Worldwide Transport. “The one-hour biographical documentary also explores the life of John Lennon leading up to his murder, when he broke up with The Beatles to pursue a solo career … and as a political activist alongside his wife Yoko Ono in New York city.”
Food, art and design buffs will surely appreciate Flame’s new eight-part series, A Long Weekend in…With Rory O’Connell. A world-renowned chef and food writer, O’Connell takes viewers on a whirlwind tour of art, culture, architecture during his culinary adventures in cities like Copenhagen, Vienna and Lisbon.
Source: apex.aero
Elton John has opened up about how former Beatles guitarist George Harrison helped him during his long battle with drug addiction.
Speaking to Chris Evans on his Virgin Radio Breakfast show, the 72-year-old recalled how Harrison helped him when he was at the peak of his addiction. something he discussed in his recent memoir ‘Me’. The book sees Elton recalling the time he hijacked a Rolling Stones show while high on cocaine, as well as the moment when he mistook Bob Dylan for his gardener while high – describing him as “scruffy”.
Evans asked Elton what the “best piece of advice” was that Harrison gave him. “Stop putting that marching powder up your nose,” John laughed, before celebrating his 29 year sobriety with Evans. “Twenty-nine-years it’s been. The nose is still here!”
Elton also went on to give some advice to young musicians starting out now on the show. “You’ve got to play live…If you want to have a career, record sales will go up and down and people are so fickle,” Elton advised. He continued: “Now, when you’re young, they’ll drop you like a five-pound note on the floor and you’ve got to be able to play live and believe in yourself, but play live.”
Source: Elizabeth Aubrey/nme.com
The Beatles legend, Paul McCartney recently spoke to Billboard about a bunch of issues. Here, the iconic co-founder of the ‘Fab Four’ discussed the purchase of the current holding company, MPL, which McCartney bought back in the late sixties was an answer to not owning his own body of work with the Beatles. In addition, McCartney discusses how much equity he was given for his company, along with John Lennon. Paul McCartney just revealed what he ‘stole’ from Bono.
I think so. John and I felt screwed out of our rightful recompense. With our original agreement with Dick James, Dick went to us and said, “You can have your own company.” And we were young boys — we were young and foolish, but we were beautiful! And we said, “Wow, great.” So he gave us our own company, Northern Songs, which was 49% us, 51% him, which gave him voting control. Later, we went to him a couple of times and said, “Dick, now that we’ve done all this stuff, can we have a raise?” And he basically said, “I’m sorry, I can’t — you’re under contract.” I now know he could’ve just said, “I’ll give you a new contract.” So when I had the opportunity to have another publishing company so cleanly, this was great.
Source: Mike Mazzarone/Mike Mazzarone
If you live in Arkansas, you know about Central High School, you know about the Little Rock Nine, and you know what happened in September of 1957.
But what you may not know – is the impact that moment had around the world.
"I think many Arkansans don't realize just how wide an impact the school crisis made. It was international headlines in every country around the world and reverberated across the globe," said Dr. John Kirk, a Professor of History at U-A Little Rock.
Kirk's an expert on the civil rights movement, with a focus on Little Rock's place in it. But, he's not the only person from the United Kingdom with an interest in Arkansas history.
In 2016, Sir Paul McCartney took the stage at Verizon Arena and shared his connection with our state's past. He told the crowd that the civil rights struggle in the U.S, specifically the Little Rock Nine, inspired one of the Beatles' biggest hits.
Source: JD Roberts, Ashley King/thv11.com
When The Beatles were in the studio, Paul McCartney was most often the one driving everyone nuts during the recording process. That was certainly the case with “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” the Abbey Road track the other Beatles came to despise.
Paul’s obsession with getting a recording just right was the thing that got under his bandmates’ skin. During the White Album sessions, his endless tweaking of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” annoyed everyone involved — even the typically unflappable George Martin.
By most accounts, John Lennon had a different approach in the studio. John could be downright impatient when it came to recording his songs. In one case, he was willing to accept a Ringo drum part he disliked simply to move the process along. (Ringo later fixed it on his own.)
But John claimed the band (led by Paul) took a different tack when recording his tunes. He described an “atmosphere of casualness” he never noticed while recording Paul’s songs. And he said Paul “subconsciously tried to destroy” some of his greatest work.
Source: cheatsheet.com
The catalogue of The Beatles is undoubtedly one of the most impressive in musical history. But what were John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr’s favourite Beatles album?
As a single unit under the moniker of The Beatles, the four individuals may have at times moved as one but in truth, their individualism would often lead them down different paths. The personalities of The Beatles are part of what endeared them to so many hearts across the world during their explosion in the swinging sixties.
While some of that was down to the marketing of George Martin, it was certainly true that their different tastes and talents were an organic evolution of not only the band but the members as people in their own right.
This led to a beautiful tapestry of all four members’ songwriting expertise. Lennon and McCartney will always be remembered as the principal songwriters in the band but Harrison and Starr’s contribution can not be underestimated.
Source: faroutmagazine.co.uk
When The Beatles came back from India in spring of 1968, they had written so many songs they couldn’t fit them on one album. So they did something they’d never done before: They recorded a double album. Though they released it as a self-titled record, it became known as The White Album.
That opened up some space for George Harrison. As recently as Sgt. Pepper’s (1967), the Fab Four had released albums that only featured one song by George. On The White Album, George had four songs he wrote and sang the lead vocal on.
And he had more ready to go that didn’t make the cut. The list included “Not Guilty,” which he released on his own 1979 album, and “Sour Milk Sea” which he gave to Jackie Lomax to record.
Of the four that went out on the album, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” ranks high on the list of George’s best songs. But the stirring “Long, Long, Long” wasn’t far behind. That track was a special kind of love song for The Beatles.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Peter Asher is more than qualified to take us on a journey through the Beatles’ many songs and adventures. He’s a longtime friend of the band, and in the late ’60s was a producer for the Beatles’ Apple label, signing such talents as James Taylor. He’s been producing stars ever since and recently hosted SiriusXM’s radio show about the Fab Four, “From Me to You.” Though hardcore Beatles fans won’t find much that’s terribly surprising about the band in Asher’s new book, “The Beatles from A to Zed,” the writer and producer excels at excavating details and connections that sparkle and entertain.
Adopting Asher’s alphabetical format, here are some delightful — and less-than-delightful — takeaways from Asher’s book. (Space limitations kept me from including the full alphabet.)
A: A is for Abbey Road Studios. It was originally known as EMI Recording Studios and was inaugurated by Sir Edward Elgar, England’s famous classical composer who wrote that school graduation grind, “Pomp and Circumstance.” A is also for allusions. In James Taylor’s song “Carolina in My Mind, he mentions “the holy host of others standing around me.” That “holy host,” Asher reveals, is the Beatles. The title of Paul McCartney’s song “Queenie Eye” alludes to a Liverpool street game, but Asher, a well-off Londoner, has never heard of it. (One point for working-class Liverpool.)
Source: Sibbie O'Sullivan/washingtonpost.com
Millennials can put Boomers down all they want, but I’m damned okay with the fact that I got to experience the undisputed best band ever changing the world in real time. And all these years later, they’re still blowing our minds. I almost cried when the first remixed notes of “Come Together” poured from my pre-MP3 stereo, simultaneously remembering the joy that original Abbey Road produced from the moment I got it in my seventh-grade hands and feeling the losses that still ache — of the Beatles, of John and George, of youth’s dreams.
But this edition, judiciously remixed by Giles Martin and Sam Okell, instantly reignited that joy. Throughout, the vocals and instruments just pop more vividly (and Billy Preston is fully heard at last), without disturbing the perfection of the Beatles’ last — and finest — masterpiece. And the add-ons are next-level. Too often, bonus content is underwhelming, but not here. The demos and alternate takes are incredible versions in their own right, often just as extraordinary as the chosen ones. And while several have appeared on the Anthology collection or elsewhere, they’re in full context here, enhanced by the 100-page coffee-table book detailing each.
Source: Lynne Margolis/americansongwriter.com
