Beatles News
Stuart Hampton and partner Joanna Bond - staged a reenactment of John and Yoko's famous 'Bed-In' stunt at the Marine Hotel in Aberystwyth to Commemorate the 50th anniversary of the original Bed In which took place at the Amsterdam Hilton on the 25th of March 1969.
Here's what they said: "The event went really well! there were ques outside the door and people singing in the corridors, in the bedroom and people could hear it from the streets - We are so pleased with the turn out and feel so happy to have re-created the true atmosphere of the peace and love hippie 60's! - The original stunt took place at the Amsterdam Hilton - Who we have been talking to since they liked our posts on Instagram and twitter and have been messaging us saying they are considering booking us as a John and Yoko tribute act for future events! The Beatles museum were also impressed by our efforts and as such we inspired them to create a campaign to encourage others to do a bed in on their facebook and instagram pages using our photo's - Im so happy about that because im a huge Beatles fan and regularly go out performing their songs in Bars. We also did this because we feel that John and Yoko's original spiritual ideas and philosophy for the bed-in are just as relevant today as they were back in 1969 - Peace and Love never stop being a good thing to promote and encourage in our world!
This event took place in the Marine Hotel in Aberystwyth - Who agreed to sponsor the event by providing us with a room for free - We kinda thought that Aberystwyth was the UK's Amsterdam, as the place names are kinda similar-ish.....
The event was attended by the general public - and a number of musicians and friends - Myself and my partner played the part of john and yoko (we joked about calling ourselves 'stu and jojo') and accompanying us was my friend Shion Buschner on Harmonium, Ailsa Hughs playing maraka's and singing, and Pete hughes on Cajon.
We really think we did John and Yoko proud by staging a bed-in of our own, and we believe that the messages of peace and love that they were trying to promote are just as relevant today as they were in 1969!
We have made a little video of the best bits on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJRg_a5FvZs
You can point to any number of things that split up The Beatles by 1970. Obviously, the differences between John Lennon and Paul McCartney had become too numerous to ignore. When John and Paul nearly fought during The White Album (1968) sessions, you knew the troubles were serious.
The same could also be said for another day in ’68 when Ringo walked out on the band and left the country. Or the moment early the following year when George Harrison quit the group and decided to focus on his own music.
In brief, The Beatles were frequently a mess during their final years together. But somehow, the band stuck it out together and cut the tracks for those beloved final records (including Abbey Road and Let It Be).
Going by what John Lennon said after the breakup, the trouble began shortly after the band lost manager Brian Epstein in August 1967. From that point on, he could see the end coming.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Did you ever get the feeling that the Beatles were having more fun than their fans?
For a while, they certainly did. While paying their dues in Hamburg, Germany, the Beatles enjoyed what one expert called “the wildest time of their lives.”
I’m Chris Erskine (a.k.a., Ringo), filling in for Catharine Hamm on Escapes, as we trip out this week on the Beatles’ drug-fueled formative years.
Travel writer Dean R. Owen reports many OMG moments in his exploration of the noisy, smoke-filled clubs where the band polished its act. Among the highlights: a three-hour walking tour of the joints, including the site of the Star Club where the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix performed in the 1960s.
“The trip provided me a completely different perspective of the Beatles,” says Owen, a fan since the tender age of 8. “Rather than the mop-top, Edwardian-suited Liverpool lads on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,’ I was able more clearly to envision John, Paul, and George in leather jackets, jeans and cowboy boots emulating Elvis Presley, Little Richard and other American rock ’n’ roll icons.”
Source: Chris Erskine/latimes.com
If you want to chart how quickly The Beatles progressed in the late 1960s, just check the dates of the albums. By early 1967, they had expanded their musical palette with tunes like “A Day in the Life” fromSgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Less than two years later, John Lennon and Paul McCartney collaborated on their last great tune together, “I’ve Got a Feeling.” With that song, fans heard stripped-down Beatles rock at its finest. It was a completely different sound from “Lucy in the Sky” (not to mention “Norwegian Wood”).
In March ’69, just after marrying Yoko Ono, John got to work on a new song about the adventures surrounding their wedding. Taking the same approach the band did on Let It Be, Lennon kept things rocking and spare on the tune.
However, the track that became “The Ballad of John and Yoko” never landed on a Beatles studio album. Since John recorded it much like he did his first solo album and wanted it released quick, it went out as a single instead of on the final albums.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Steven Van Zandt has lifted the lid on his on-stage duet with Paul McCartney in a new interview with Music Week.
The E Street Band guitarist, whose latest LP, Summer Of Sorcery (Wicked Cool/UME), came out on May 3, was nearing the end of a solo show at London’s Roundhouse in November 2017, when McCartney arrived for an impromptu rendition of The Beatles’ I Saw Her Standing There.
“We’d been trying to catch each other’s show for a while,” explained Van Zandt. “Paul is working all the time and so I was very surprised when he happened to be in town. I said, ‘Just have a nice night out, don’t feel any pressure at all to come on stage’.
“Suddenly, we were about to do the encore and my roadie comes up and says, ‘Paul’s coming on!’ Now it just so happens that I’d felt, in case he did want to come on, I’d better have something ready. I had done a Little Richard-like arrangement of I Saw Her Standing There, just for fun, and that’s what we did – there was no rehearsal.
Source: by James Hanley/musicweek.com
There are more great Beatles songs than most people can count. If you look strictly at the band’s list of No. 1 hits, you’ll miss dozens of inspired compositions from their eight years of recording together. “I’ve Got a Feeling,” the last great Lennon-McCartney tune, is a perfect example.
However, the better example might be the entire Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, as The Beatles didn’t release any of those songs as singles. If fans wanted to get their hands on the title track or Ringo singing “With a Little Help From My Friends,” they had to buy the album.
Then there was the album’s showpiece at the end of Side Two: “A Day in the Life.” When Rolling Stone ranked the best Beatles songs of all time, it placed that epic finale right at No. 1, describing it as “the ultimate Lennon-McCartney collaboration.”
Yet that’s not what many experts think of “A Day in the Life.” Beatles biographer Philip Norman called it “John Lennon’s masterpiece,” and several other musicologists agreed. Though Paul McCartney definitely had a hand in it, The Beatles’ greatest song came mostly from Lennon.
Source: cheatsheet.com
After The Beatles breakup, everyone had a chance to see how each member would react. With the debut Paul McCartney album, most saw an isolated man trying to work his way through it via music. (Paul said he was quite depressed during that period.)
For his part, John Lennon underwent “primal scream” therapy for close to four months. While that experience had to be unpleasant, he came out of it with a briliant solo album.
Following years of working in their shadow, George Harrison’s No. 1 album (late 1970) launched his successful solo career. The next year, he organized a benefit concert for Bangladesh. George was quietly going about his business — and doing so in style.
But by comparison, Ringo Starr was having an absolute blast. After getting his feet wet in the movies during the Beatles’ last years, he knocked off two other films in 1971. Meanwhile, he was making recordings of his own, directed a T. Rex concert film, and started a design company.
Source: cheatsheet.com
In a recent newsletter published on Paulmccartney.com, The Beatles bassist Paul McCartney has revealed the song which John Lennon wrote during a crisis.
Paul said that ‘John started writing ‘Help!’ during a crisis at that time in his life’. You can read the entire statement below.
Interviewer asked:
“Do you have a song that you put on if you’re ever having a hard time or a bad day, and it instantly makes you feel better?”
Paul responded:
“There’s a track on Egypt Station that came out of a hard time I think would fit the bill now! Alternatively, it would be old music like ‘All Shook Up’ or ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ by Elvis Presley. Or ‘What’d I Say’ by Ray Charles.
Source: Feyyaz Ustaer/metalheadzone.com
Ok, what do you think?
The Royal Family usually only choose traditional names for their children, but Prince Harry was always going to do things a bit differently.
His firstborn son has been named Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor , and there's said to be a very cool meaning behind his middle name. Meghan Markle's etiquette teacher believes Harrison is tribute to the Duchess of Sussex's favourite Beatle.
Edmund Fry, who taught Meg how to be a royal, said she is a big fan of The Beatles and in particular George Harrison. He told The Sun: "She has a great fond feeling for George Harrison and that’s where that name came from. She’s a great fan of The Beatles."
And it seems Meghan and Harry both had a hand in choosing their newborn's name. Archie's first name is said to be in tribute to the man credited with saving Harry's military career.
Major Tom Archer-Burton, who is known as Archie, was Prince Harry's commanding officer when he was in the army and helped him be deployed in Afghanistan.
Source: The Mirror
The four Beatles all loved Motown, and would search the racks of Brian Epstein’s NEMS record shop for hidden treasures from the Detroit label, hoping to find unheard gems. As Ringo Starr recalled in The Beatles’ Anthology, it was a love of such singles as Barrett Strong’s ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’ and The Miracles’ ‘You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me’ that brought the four together: “When I joined The Beatles we didn’t really know each other, but if you looked at each of our record collections, the four of us had virtually the same records. We all had The Miracles, we all had Barrett Strong and people like that. I suppose that helped us gel as musicians, and as a group.”
As the 60s became dominated by Liverpool’s Fab Four, Motown’s finest paid tribute to The Beatles, with a string of top class covers of their songs. Here’s our selection of the best Motown Beatles covers.
There’s a very strong argument to be made that Stevie Wonder’s 1970 cover of ‘We Can Work It Out’ is not only the greatest Motown cover of a Beatles number, but that it’s a strong contender for the best cover of any Beatles song by anyone, ever. Full stop. Funkier than a mosquito’s tweeter, Wonder earned a Grammy nomination for the song. In 2010, he performed his take at the White House in front of both President Barack Obama and Paul McCartney in a star-studded concert to honour the former Beatle. He stole the show.
Source: Paul McGuinness/udiscovermusic.com
