Beatles News
“Yesterday,” directed by Danny Boyle, brings one of the most irresistible musical forces to film: The Beatles.
No, The Beatles aren’t actually in the movie, but the band's music is heavily incorporated. The plot revolves around a worldwide power outage causing the entire world to forget The Beatles
Only Jack Malik, played by Himesh Patel, remembers The Beatles. Malik, an unsuccessful singer-songwriter, takes many of The Beatles’ songs as his own and becomes a huge star.
Played wonderfully by Patel, Malik comes across as a loveable friend with the best of intentions at heart.
Another fabulous casting decision was Kate McKinnon as Malik’s new manager, Debra Hammer. McKinnon’s straightforward, insensitive jokes lend her usual "Saturday Night Live" charm to the film.
Source: Olivia Elston/idsnews.com
If you’re like most fans of The Beatles, you probably aren’t that interested in the technical details of the work in the studio. However, if you read anything at all about it, the more you realize how many innovations the Fab Four and their label’s studio wizards pulled off over the years.
A great example came on the Sgt Pepper’s epic “A Day in the Life.” For the end of the song, John Lennon asked his producer and engineers for ” a sound building up from nothing to the end of the world.” So they hired and orchestra and got as close as they could.
While that track might be the peak of the Beatles’ experimental phase, it didn’t come out of nowhere. Revolver, which the band recorded and released a year earlier (1966), showcased the Fab Four building toward those highs. By the time it was released, they’d quit touring for good.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Yesterday, the new film from screenwriter Richard Curtis (Love Actually) and director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire), offers up a unique premise. The film takes place in a world where The Beatles’ music suddenly ceases to exist. (This happens following a cosmic event of some sort.)
From that point on, no one knows the John Lennon epic “A Day in the Life,” the George Harrison ballad “Something,” or the Paul McCartney tune from which the movie takes its name. Only a young British singer-songwriter of Indian descent is aware of the Fab Four catalog.
Obviously, that’s a formula for success for the struggling musician, and it’s also an interesting premise for a film. On the movie’s opening weekend, Yesterday surprised in theaters with a $17 million take.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Fifty years back, on January 30, 1969, George Harrison stepped on to the roof of his group's Apple headquarters in London and plugged in a Fender Telecaster. Famously, it would be The Beatles' last ever public performance. Not quite so famously, his guitar was an unusual model, a new Rosewood Telecaster that he'd recently received from Fender.
In fact, it was the fourth Fender guitar that The Beatles had acquired. During their early years, the group hadn't owned any Fenders, although George had written to a friend in 1960 that the guitar he "might manage" was a Strat. Instead, he decided to indulge his passion for Gretsch guitars—the brand used by one of his six-string heroes, Chet Atkins—and bought a secondhand Duo Jet, and, later, a couple of Country Gents and a Tennessean. The Beatles - "Don't Let Me Down," live on the Apple rooftop.
But George didn't have to wait too long to get his Fender: in 1965, he and John Lennon each acquired a secondhand Strat for studio use. Two years later, Paul McCartney bought an Esquire. Paul was becoming increasingly confident with six rather than four strings. After all, he'd started in the group as a guitarist. He soon put the new Esquire to good use, for example playing it for his soaring, concise solo on "Good Morning, Good Morning" during the Sgt Pepper's sessions at Abbey Road.
Source: Tony Bacon Gear History/reverb.com
Eric Clapton has revisited a track on which he featured from his friend George Harrison’s classic All Things Must Pass album. Clapton collaborates on Sheryl Crow’s new version of the enduring ‘Beware Of Darkness’ from her upcoming, all-star Threads album. The new interpretation also features in-demand Grammy-winner Brandi Carlile, who as reported is also the co-producer of the upcoming album by country star Tanya Tucker.
Threads features several other tracks that have been unveiled in recent weeks, including the most recent, ‘Still The Good Old Days,’ featuring Joe Walsh. In addition to other notables whose involvement we’ve already observed, such as Keith Richards, Vince Gill, St. Vincent and Maren Morris, the album will include contributions from James Taylor, Kris Kristofferson, Chuck D, Gary Clark Jr and Andra Day.
Source: By Paul Sexton/udiscovermusic.com
After the Beatles’ breakup, fans learned in detail how much John Lennon resented Paul McCartney (and vice versa). In an interview with Rolling Stone, John skewered his old bandmate, describing his first album as “rubbish” and otherwise treating him with condescension.
But those were the ugly days of the early ’70s. At the start of the ’60s, the pair were incredibly tight. They hung out together, wrote hits like “I Want to Hold Your Hand” side-by-side, and generally behaved like brothers toward one another.
After John’s son Julian was born in ’63, Paul became (in John’s words) “like an uncle to him.” Even as their relationship began to deteriorate in the late ’60s, the old songwriting duo didn’t lose that connection. Paul helping John record “The Ballad of John and Yoko” in ’69 offers a great example.
Source: cheatsheet.com
In an exclusive Screen Rant interview, Yesterday director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Richard Curtis discuss why Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr don’t have cameos. The British romantic comedy features an alternate universe where The Beatles never existed, allowing the protagonist to become famous by performing the band’s catalog of hits.
Yesterday stars Himish Patel as Jack Malik, a Suffolk musician who struggles to pay the bills. He receives support from long-time friend and manager Ellie Appleton (Lily James), whose primary job is teaching children. After an international power outage, a near-tragedy leaves Jack in the hospital and he soon learns that McCartney, Starr, George Harrison, and John Lennon never became famous as The Beatles. Incidentally, Jack creates a master plan to perform The Beatles’ music and takes full credit as the creative genius behind the work. Produced for $26 million, Yesterday has earned just over $6 million at the box office since releasing on June 28 in the United Kingdom, and includes supporting performances from Kate McKinnon (Saturday Night Live), Lamorne Morris (Game Night), and English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran as himself.
Source: Q.V. Hough/Movie News
I was more than halfway through a recent “London Rocks” tour—a jaunt which promises to lead its customers through the landmarks of British popular music—when I noticed that our guide had pointed out many more things that no longer exist than ones that still do. We’d peaked through the windows of the former Musicland record shop where a young Elton John worked in the late ’60s (now, it’s a store that sells pricey wedding gowns). We strolled the alley where Marianne Faithfull languished as a homeless heroin addict in the mid-’70s (currently, it’s headquarters to the Good Housekeeping Institute), then breezed by the studio where Queen recorded key parts of “Bohemian Rhapsody” (a locale since privatized into a $10 million single family home), before gazing at the vestigial entrance to the Marquee Club, where everyone from Hendrix to the Sex Pistols wailed. (It’s now—what else?—luxury lofts).
Source: Jim Farber/thedailybeast.com
The Beatles icon Paul McCartney recently performed in Phoenix, and he called out the audience for becoming a ‘black hole’ when he performs new material off his latest album Egypt Station. Paul McCartney’s official website recently made a surprising Greta Van Fleet claim.
He said after performing “Lady Madonna” and “Eleanor Rigby” that fans are far kinder when he plays old classics.
“One thing is, we know which songs you like,” he said. “Because what happens is when we do an old Beatles song? The place lights up with your phones. And it’s like a galaxy of stars. And then when we do a new one, it’s like a black hole. But we don’t care. We’re gonna do ’em anyway.”
McCartney and his band then performed “Fuh You” which led to the ‘black hole.’
Source: Brett Buchanan/alternativenation.net
Danny Boyle’s film Yesterday asks a provocative question – how would the world be different if the Beatles had never existed for anyone else around you? Would playing them these songs elicit the same emotional response these tunes have had for decades, or would they be considered merely a bunch of twee melodies suitable for background enjoyment? Thankfully we don’t have to live the nightmare scenario of a world without these songs from Macca, Johnny, George and Ringo, graced with music that’s been the world’s shared soundtrack since the early 1960s.
Yesterday has some strong cover versions of the Fab’s tunes, with the performance of these “lost” songs central to Richard Curtis’ screenplay. Many other films have used reinterpretations of Beatles tunes in various ways, providing through reinterpretation a different look at what these songs fundamentally represent, using these themes and variation to celebrate the classical canon of Western pop music while making the works unique.
