Beatles News
Sunday marked 55 years since the fab four made a whole lot of Winnipeggers twist and shout without singing or strumming a single note during their little visit to the city. George Harrison waves, upper left, as he and Ringo Starr, right, John Lennon, lower left, and Paul McCartney, not pictured, descend the steps of their plane after landing at the Winnipeg airport on Aug. 18, 1964. (CBC)
The Beatles landed at the Winnipeg airport on Aug. 18, 1964. Their brief stopover on the tarmac was punctuated by screams and cries from the droves of young fans who flocked to the airport to greet them.
"It's the first place that they ever set foot in Canada," said music historian John Einarson. "They didn't come and play, they didn't come and perform, but they came for the fans ... and fuel."
Source: cbc.ca
When The Beatles received their MBE awards from Queen Elizabeth in 1965, they still hadn’t hit their creative or commercial peak. That would come a few years later with Sgt. Pepper’s, The White Album, and Abbey Road.
But they’d already started their march up the ladder of British society, as far as royal honors are concerned. At the time, John Lennon wasn’t all that impressed with his MBE, and a few years later he returned his to Buckingham Palace with a cheeky note addressed to the queen.
As for the other Beatles, they seemed to have more respect for the honor — especially drummer Ringo Starr. “I was never giving mine back,” he said later. “It meant a lot.”
The same went for Paul McCartney, always the less disruptive half of the Lennon-McCartney alliance. That attitude likely served Paul well when his name came up for knighthood in the 1990s. For a while, it appeared he’d be the only Beatle who’d ever be addressed as “sir.”
Source: cheatsheet.com
It was an acid trip with Peter Fonda, who has died at the age of 79, that inspired John Lennon to write one of The Beatles’ classic album tracks.
In 1965, the actor – who would go on to co-write and star in counterculture classic Easy Rider four years later – was enjoying a night out with the Fab Four when George Harrison, high on LSD, feared he would die.
Fonda, who survived a near-fatal shooting accident as a child, told The Post in 2000: “I was saying, ‘Don’t worry George, it’s OK. I know what it’s like to be dead. We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
These words of encouragement, though, confused Lennon. Fonda recalled: “Lennon looks over and says, ‘You know what it’s like to be dead? Who put all that s*** in your head? You’re making me feel like I’ve never been born.'"
Source: Jacob Stolworthy/independent.co.uk
After recording the groundbreaking Revolver (1966) album, The Beatles realized they’d given everything to the music but still didn’t have a name for the record. So they nearly used a goofy titles like Fat Man and Bobby or After Geography (Ringo’s idea, as a send-up of the Stones’ Aftermath).
Later, the Fab Four continued its run of uninspired album titles. The 1968 double record known as The White Album actually went out as a self-titled release (The Beatles). For their final album, they simply used the name of the street where their studio was located (Abbey Road).
In brief, The Beatles were much better at writing music and titling songs than they were as naming albums. If they weren’t using a pun like Rubber Soul or Revolver, they were barely giving the record a title at all.
Source: cheatsheet.com
It was 50 years ago tomorrow, Sergeant Pepper told the band to stop playing. And with the final C-major from their last song, prophetically titled The End, still ringing in the air, the four greatest popular musicians Britain has ever produced packed up their instruments and walked away. They’d been together since John Lennon was 17 and Paul McCartney 15 – 12 long years of furious creativity, forged in the dank cellar of The Cavern and the grubby dives of Hamburg, and ending up on top of the world. In that time they’d recorded a staggering 213 songs. But for The Beatles, August 18, 1969, was the day the music died.
To the outside world there was no warning, no hint of the earthquake to come. The sun-splashed month had started with a photoshoot resulting in the most iconic picture in the history of pop music.
It ended in an uneasy truce between the four warring members, each desperately looking for a way out of their magic circle.
Source: Christopher Wilson/express.co.uk
Attention Beatles fans: we’ve found a loophole to Paul McCartney‘s pricey concert tickets. The music icon will be celebrating his new children’s book, Hey Grandude! with a book signing at Waterstones bookstore in London – and the tickets are surprisingly cheap.
Alternative Nation reports that the tickets are on sale for £14, which equals about 17 U.S. dollars. Considering that fact that McCartney’s concerts typically sell for a few hundred bucks, this is quite the bargain. Customers will not only have the chance to meet McCartney, but can bring up to two children or grandchildren and walk way with a signed copy of Hey Grandude! Guests will also have the chance to meet the book’s illustrator, Kathryn Durst. There’s a strict no-access policy for non ticket holders so guests should make sure they’ve secured a ticket before arriving. The announcement also states that all bags, cameras and mobile phone devices must be placed in a bag drop prior to entering, so it’s not known if guests will be able to get photos with the Beatles icon.
Source: Catherine Santino/fatherly.com
It took a half-century, but Ringo’s rockin’ a rooftop again — and he’s doing it in New York.
Fifty years after he and his fellow Beatles played atop London’s Apple Corps headquarters, Ringo Starr will be performing a rooftop concert with his All-Starr Band Sunday at Manhattan’s Pier 17 to wrap up a three-day weekend of Empire State shows.
The drummer-singer, 79, is still getting by with a little help from his friends — and loving New York, where the Beatles introduced themselves to America in 1964 when they touched down at JFK airport.
“No one will understand the emotion of us landing in America,” Starr told the Daily News. “But it was New York, and all of the music we loved came from there. It was just far out.
Source: Peter Sblendorio/nydailynews.com
The Mersey Beatles, a Liverpool-born Beatles tribute band and the house band for over a decade at the world-famous Cavern Club, will perform Oct. 11 at Benton Civic Center.
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of "Abbey Road," the band will play the entire album live followed by a set of greatest hits.
Julia Baird, John Lennon's sister and the director of the Cavern Club, will be in attendance selling and signing copies of her book "Imagine This: Growing Up with My Brother John Lennon" at the general merchandise table before, during and after the show.
"The Mersey Beatles have been playing the Cavern Club for over 15 years and are one of the best you will see," Baird said.
The Mersey Beatles are no ordinary tribute band. They are the official Beatles tribute band representing the city of Liverpool, and from 2002 to 2012 they were the resident tribute band at The Cavern Club, the nightclub in Liverpool, England, where The Beatles perfected their act before launching a global rock music revolution in the 1960s.
Source: Benton News/carbondaletimes.com
A book described as an “extraordinary visual memoir” is coming from perhaps the most famous muse of all time, Pattie Boyd. The model, photographer and author is, of course, the former wife of both George Harrison and Eric Clapton. Pattie Boyd: My Life Through a Lens, is being published April 7, 2020, via Simon and Schuster’s Insight Editions imprint.
It’s available for pre-order below.
Born in England on March 17, 1944, Boyd pursued a successful modeling career before meeting the Beatles’ George Harrison on the set of the 1964 film, A Hard Day’s Night. The two married when she was just 21, on January 21, 1966, and Boyd became a source of inspiration for Harrison’s songwriting, sparking his interest in meditation and Eastern philosophy.
Source: Best Classic Bands Staff
By the end of the Beatles’ great run as recording artists, George Harrison was writing and performing on the level of bandmates John Lennon and Paul McCartney. But it definitely didn’t start out that way.
In fact, John and Paul considered George something of a lesser Beatle in the early 1960s. Part of it was his age (George was the youngest band member), but it also had to do with the quality of his original tunes. Later, John spoke of an “embarrassing period when George’s songs weren’t that good.”
Though John was likely referring to the time around 1964’s A Hard Day’s Night (on which George had zero songs), another rough patch for him popped up during the recording of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. As many fans know, George only has “Within Without You” on that album.
George did introduce another song earlier in the Sgt. Pepper sessions, but it didn’t make the cut. In the studio, it was greeted with apathy from John and a lot of negative feedback from producer George Martin and his team.
Source: cheatsheet.com
