Beatles News
Back in 1971, George Harrison was behind one of the best gestures of goodwill that a rock star is ever likely to give, and with it, he set the tone for benefit gigs across the musical world. It was a huge moment for Harrison personally and globally the gig was in aid of Bangladesh’s victims of famine and war. The concert would feature an all-star line up of Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, Leon Russell, Billy Preston, Eric Clapton, Klaus Voorman, Badfinger, and, of course, Ravi Shankar.
Harrison enlisted the help of his friends to pave the way for large sacel charity concerts i the future but it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Harrison had originally intended to reunite with his former bandmates for the night and provide concert-goers with the first live performance from The Beatles in America since 1966, but it wasn’t to be.
Source: Jack Whatley/faroutmagazine.co.uk
While The Beatles were together and releasing albums, there were occasions when band members wouldn’t play on a certain track. One famous example came on Paul McCartney’s masterpiece “Yesterday.” For that song, the arrangement didn’t need any other Beatles.
In later years, you would usually find band members missing on tracks due to some issue or other. On “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” Paul played drums because Ringo had walked out on the group during the White Album sessions.
The following year, while recording of Abbey Road, John Lennon didn’t participate on “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” because he hated Paul’s song. (John had also declined to play on George Harrison’s “I Me Mine.”)
But there was one common denominator on every example: Paul was fully invested in the recordings. Looking back, Paul remembered skipping a session only once. It happened late in the recording of Revolver.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Petula Clark, one of the top British singers of all time, remembers being heckled at a Montreal performance, and then consoled by a pyjama-clad John Lennon.
Clark, now 86, began her performing career as a young child, singing for radio broadcasts and appearing in films and television programs — occasionally performing in French. In 1964, her hit single “Downtown” propelled her to superstardom.
In an interview with The Guardian, Clark remembered the night she played in Montreal in 1969. The city was experiencing a tumultuous year — the Quebec Liberation Front was responsible for multiple bombings as separatist tensions between anglophones and francophones reached their peak.
Clark told the Montreal Gazette in 2017 that she had been going to Montreal for years to sing in French. So when her English hits began to rise on the charts, she thought it would be a great chance to do a bilingual show.
She was booked for multiple nights from May to June 1969 at Place des Arts. According to the Gazette, when she would begin to sing a song in French, the anglophones in the audience would begin to heckle her. When she switched to a song in English, the francophones would follow suit.
Source: nationalpost.com
On the double record commonly known as The White Album (1968), The Beatles left it all on the table. Paul McCartney had “Ob-La-Di,Ob-La-Da” and several other examples of what John Lennon called “granny music.” Both Paul (“Blackbird”) and John (“Julia) had quiet, pretty ballads.
Meanwhile, fans also got their share of rocking tracks. Between “Yer Blues,” “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” and George Harrison’s “Savoy Truffle,” The Beatles didn’t forget to turn the amps up to 11 on the record — even without the heavy version of John’s “Revolution.”
But no song matched the sheer volume and chaos of Paul’s “Helter Skelter.” From the searing opening guitar riff to the grinding bass and shouted vocals, the song is 4:30 of hard-rock madness.
Though the song got twisted in the mind of Charles Manson following the release of The White Album, the reason Paul wrote the song was quite simple and innocent. And its subject matter couldn’t have been further from Manson’s ugly interpretation.
Source: cheatsheet.com
When you look back at the career of George Harrison, you might call 1966’s Revolver his breakout moment. The revolutionary Beatles album featured three songs by George, who tried his hand at experimental guitar solos and otherwise fully committed to the recording sessions.
Though he reached something of a low point with Sgt. Pepper’s the following year, George’s leap forward in songwriting on Revolver paved the way for “Something” and other classics that were to come.
Yet it didn’t come easy on Revolver. As George worked to increase his standing in The Beatles, he met resistance from John Lennon and borderline dismissal from Paul McCartney. George Martin, the band’s esteemed producer, harbored his own doubts about George at the time.
Things came to a head during the sessions for “Taxman,” the hard-rocking track that opens the album. Though George wrote the song and was the band’s lead guitarist, Paul played the famous guitar solo on it.
Source: cheatsheet.com
When they arrived America and made their historic appearance on Ed Sullivan, The Beatles were quite young. Ringo, the elder of the group, checked in at 23 years old. Meanwhile, George Harrison, the youngest, hadn’t even turned 21.
So when the smiling lads performed “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” it sounded like exactly the sort of song they’d write. (It shot to No. 1 not long before they landed at JFK.) But things would change by mid-decade.
A little over two years later, the Fab Four recorded an album featuring backwards tape loops, a guitar solo in reverse, and sound effects that seemed to be seagulls. The LP ended with John Lennon vocals that sounded “like the Dalai Lama chanting from a mountaintop.”
On that track (“Tomorrow Never Knows”), John kicked things off with a line from Timothy Leary’s Psychedelic Experience. Looking back, he wasn’t exaggerating when he called that classic record “the acid album.”
Source: cheatsheet.com
Fans of Richard Curtis’ rom-coms (and based on his box office numbers there must be tens of millions) will find in "Yesterday" many of the pleasures that drew them to "Four Weddings and a Funeral," "Notting Hill," "Love, Actually" and "Bridget Jones’s Diary." This film, however, has a fantasy dimension that the others did not. An unsuccessful singer-composer, Jack Malik, awakens from a bicycle accident into a world in which the Beatles never existed. Their catalog of songs is gone, and after a moment of moral hesitation, Jack resolves to present them as his own. In "Yesterday"’s universe, these quintessential 1960s songs are as popular as they were in our universe, and make Jack an overnight star. Some critics have liked "Yesterday," but many were disappointed that the film does not treat its clever premise more seriously — or that the film squanders the opportunity to explore the meaning of the Beatles' music today.
Source: salon.com
What did it take for The Beatles to make a masterpiece? It depended on the song and situation. With the epic “A Day in the Life,” John Lennon came in with the idea, Paul McCartney contributed his part, and longtime producer George Martin found a way to realize John’s complete vision.
On the classic “Yesterday,” Paul said the music came to him in a dream. From there, he struggled to find the right lyrics but eventually nailed down one of his signature songs. Again, Martin made the song come to life — and, for the first time, without the participation of the other Beatles.
Other brilliant tracks took innovative recording techniques to make the root of John’s ideas blossom. On one occasion, he asked for his voice to sound “like the Dalai Lama on a mountaintop.” After some scrambling and experimentation, another classic went on record.
But when John came to the studio with “I Am the Walrus,” Martin could not see a masterpiece about to be born. Quite the contrary, in fact — he seemed to hate the song and the controversy it might bring.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Int he summer of 1963, The Beatles arrive at the BBC Paris Studio in London armed with a very special plan to add their own spin on an Elvis Presley classic.
Recording material with producer Terry Henebery for the eighth edition of the Pop Go The Beatles radio show, the four lads from Liverpool would record ‘I’m Gonna Sit Right Down And Cry (Over You)’, one of three Elvis songs they put to tape that day.
While Ringo Starr has always professed his distaste for drum solos, he would step up to the mark for The Beatle’s rockabilly version of the song which remained unreleased until 1994 when it was included on the Live at the BBC album.
Source: faroutmagazine.co.uk
When you run through your favorite Beatles songs credited to Lennon-McCartney, you’ll find a bunch written by either John or Paul (i.e., not both). “Yesterday,” Paul’s masterpiece, came to him in his sleep and went on record without any other Beatles backing him.
If you’re a fan of the 1969 romp “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” that one obviously came straight from John. Then there were tracks like “Come Together,” which began as a pure Lennon composition but got an assist from Paul and the gang in the studio.
As for late-era Beatles songs worthy of the Lennon-McCartney tag, Sgt. Pepper’s is the place to go. On that album, both Paul and John were energized and working together on most of the songs. That includes the classic “A Day in the Life.”
For those who want to isolate what is the best Beatles song of all and a true collaboration between the great songwriters, the closing track from Sgt. Pepper’s just about checks every box.
Source: cheatsheet.com
