Beatles News
The Fab Four grew up in Liverpool together but had drastically different family lives. In an interview with The Penguin Podcast last month, Paul McCartney spoke of his comfortable upbringing compared to John Lennon’s. The Beatles star admitted: “I was very lucky. I had a very lovely family in Liverpool.”
The 77-year-old added: “And I can’t remember any aggro. I mean how lucky is that?
“I thought everyone had that kind of a family.”
However, it was when he met John Lennon that he discovered his future bandmate had a much harder time.
The young musician had lost his mother, while his father had left at a very early age.
Source: express.co.uk
In 1965, The Beatles started on a new path. After racking up No. 1 hits with songs like “Love Me Do” and “She Loves You” in ’64, the Fab Four began digging deeper. John Lennon, resolving to turn the lens on himself, had his most introspective moment to that point with “Help.”
Though he charted a path in a different direction, Paul McCartney was also growing rapidly as a songwriter. After delivering the masterpiece “Yesterday,” he followed with more clever work like “Drive My Car” and “You Won’t See” me on Rubber Soul (released later in ’65).
By then, John was turning out classics like the sitar-infused “Norwegian Wood” as well as “Nowhere Man” and “Girl.” To George Harrison, the prospect of matching this work must have been daunting. He didn’t have someone to bounce ideas off of and had little experience writing on his own.
Source: cheatsheet.com
One of the world’s most gifted songwriters of all time, Paul McCartney has been involved in some of the most popular and beloved music the modern world has ever known. But which one of The Beatles’ extensive back catalogue was his favourite?
In a recently unearthed interview, thanks to CBS, that question has now been answered. The star, usually very coy about picking his favourite songs, was talking to Scott Muni, a legendary broadcaster for WNEW in New York City, about his then-new song ‘We All Stand Together’ back in 1984.
The singer was promoting the track, which featured in the short animated film Rupert and the Frog Song and was credited to Paul McCartney And The Frog Chorus, when Muni hit him with the age-old question, what is your favourite Beatles song?
Source: faroutmagazine.co.uk
If you were at Paul McCartney’s 1969 marriage to Linda Eastman, you’d have noticed someone conspicuously missing — John Lennon. Actually, considering none of Paul’s Beatles bandmates attended, maybe John’s absence wasn’t so surprising.
About a week later, it was John’s turn to tie the knot with Yoko Ono. (They did so in Gibraltar.) Because of the runaway nature of John and Yoko’s nuptials, you didn’t find Paul (or anyone else) in attendance there, either.
After John and Yoko had their marriage certificate, they headed to the Amsterdam Hilton to stage their first “bed-in for peace.” If you’ve heard “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” you know most of this story.
Source: cheatsheet.com
John Lennon’s departure from The Beatles split the band and rocked fans all around the world in 1970. The break-up came shortly after the Imagine hitmaker tied the knot with Yoko Ono, with the avant-garde artist bearing the brunt of the blame from The Beatles’ fanbase. The band dissolved following the release of their final album, Let It Be, and Abbey Road, having cemented their place in rock ’n’ roll history.
The split was far from amicable, sparking a feud between Lennon and his former bandmate Paul McCartney, during which they exchanged jibes publicly through the medium of their solo songs.
Later, however, they reconciled and reignited their firm friendship, which dated back to their schooldays.
Many whispers about a potential reunion circulated over the years, particularly in the latter half of the ‘70s, but it never transpired.
Source: Minnie Wright/express.co.uk
The Walrus himself, Sir Paul McCartney, was recently interviewed by BBC Radio 4’s Sarah Montague. When Montague took McCartney to task over Coldplay’s recent decision to mercifully stop touring due to their awareness of the band’s own “carbon footprint”, McCartney reassured Sarah that he has no plans to do the same. Paul McCarney ‘refuses’ listening to John Lennon songs.
“I am aware of [his carbon footprint], and you do your best. But, it is very difficult if you’re going to tour. I AM going to go on tour in America. You can’t say… ‘we’ll go by Greyhound Bus,’ because that’s just as bad! We certainly can’t just bike our way around. It’s a reality, you just have to do it, and plant a lot of trees… that’s kind of how I offset it, is by doing things that will make up for it. If I tour, that’s going to involve travel, which is going to involve a carbon footprint.”
Source: Mike Mazzarone/alternativenation.net
Any Beatles fan looking for a way to spend their Christmas cash might consider buying the latest book about the band.
Kenneth Womack’s “Solid State: The Story of ‘Abbey Road’ and the End of the Beatles” puts the Fab Four’s recording of their last album in 1969 in context of the social atmosphere and advanced technology at their disposal. The electronic talk may be a little much for some readers, but it does indicate musical growth.
Remember, “Let it Be” was recorded before “Abbey Road” but released after. Of course, the Beatles’ breakup actually began before the band reconvened to make their last record.
Still, they rallied together to create an album with new sounds, notably George Harrison’s fascination with the Moog synthesizer, Geoff Emerick’s engineering, which complimented the band’s cohesiveness, and George Martin’s arrangements. The overdubs on the song “Because,” which was influenced by a Beethoven piano sonata, resulted in a nine-voice recording.
Source: Robert Hite/thesunflower.com
Around this time of year, it’s not uncommon to talk about people “of a certain age” having been around long enough not just to read about history, but to experience it.
Peter Asher has seen — has lived — that scope of history in the music world. Not as a witness, but as a person who lived it. And those were the stories he shared with a fascinated, delighted and sold-out Nighttown Monday night, and will again in another sold-out gig at the Cleveland Heights club on Tuesday night.
But “Peter Asher: A Musical Memoir to the ’60s and Beyond” was more than just a PowerPoint recitation of known history, replete with family photos, publicity stills and amazing audio and video clips. It was two-and-a-half hours of tales and anecdotes, interspersed with a little music and a lot of laughs, that put a whole era in perspective for those of us “of a certain age.” And maybe for those who’ve just read about it.
Source: cleveland.com
The Beatles were never particularly shy about revealing their influences, especially early on in their career. On the Fab Four’s first record (Please Please Me), you couldn’t help but notice the fascination with The Shirelles, the girl group who’d made “Boys” and “Baby It’s You” famous.
On their second U.S. release, fans found the band saluting idol Chuck Berry with a cover of “Roll Over Beethoven” as the first track. Later, fans heard the Fab Four’s take on several Motown hits as well as a cover of a Smokey Robinson track (“You Really Got a Hold on Me”).
Kicking off the second side, listeners got a taste of the Beatles’ live shows with a cover of “Long Tall Sally,” a Little Richard song Paul McCartney loved to shout on the bandstand. Paul once said you had leave your body to pull off a Little Richard vocal.
Source: cheatsheet.com
John Lennon and Yoko Ono fell madly in love after meeting in London in 1966. Though they were both married at the time, the avant-garde artist to her second husband Anthony Cox and The Beatles star to his first wife Cynthia Lennon, with whom he had one son, Julian Lennon, they soon started corresponding and later began their famous romance. In 1969, the couple tied the knot at a 10-minute ceremony at the British Consulate Office in Gibraltar.
However, the intensity of their relationship combined with the vicious backlash they faced from angry Beatles fans after the band split shortly after they married (a move many blamed on Ono) soon began to take their toll on Lennon and Ono.
In 1973, he embarked on an affair with their assistant May Pang and moved out of the New York home they shared together to set up house with her in Los Angeles.
The pair had a year-and-a-half romance but he had continued contact with Ono throughout.
Source: Minnie Wright/express.co.uk
