Beatles News
A few weeks shy of his 77th birthday, Paul McCartney has nothing left to prove to anyone. He’s been in the public eye for more than five decades and is obviously accustomed to adulation.
Monday night at a packed-to-the-rafters PNC Arena, he was even cheered for taking off his coat at one point.
“That was the big wardrobe change of the whole evening,” he said.
But it is to McCartney’s credit that he still works hard to earn that adulation. He puts a surpassing amount of effort into songs he’s sung 1,000 times, and none of Monday night’s show felt the least bit rote.
McCartney’s first Raleigh performance since 2002 clocked in at just under three hours, with 38 songs spanning his career before, during and after the Beatles (even including the first tune he ever recorded, “In Spite of All the Danger” by the pre-Beatles group The Quarrymen). And yet some of his best-known songs weren’t even in the set list – “Yesterday,” “Hello, Goodbye” and “Penny Lane” among them.
For most acts, an enduring landmark like “Let It Be” would be the obvious closing number. But McCartney has written at least a dozen other songs just as iconic as that one, so he dropped “Let It Be” in eight songs from the end – it wasn’t even the pre-encore closer.
Source: wral.com
A GUITAR played by George Harrison while The Beatles were in Hamburg before they were famous is set to fetch £300,000 at auction.
The Czech-made Futurama Resonet has been unseen since 1964 when it was first prize in a magazine competition. The winner, AJ Thompson, of Saltdean, Sussex, chose cash because he didn’t play and the magazine kept it.
Harrison, who died in 2001, recalled going, aged 16, with Paul McCartney to buy the guitar in Liverpool in 1959. His mother had to sign the purchase agreement which was later paid off by Beatles manager Brian Epstein.
‘Huge interest’ is expected by auctioneers Bonhams at the sale in London on June 12.
Source: Metro
There was a time when practically everyone in the world knew about The Beatles. In fact, the band affectionately called ‘the fab four’ is still considered to be the most influential musical collaboration in modern history. Today, two of The Beatles are gone, but their children are making sure the names John, Paul, George, and Ringo are never forgotten. What are the Beatles’ kids up to these days? Here’s what we found out:
The children of John Lennon
Julian Lennon
The only child of John Lennon and his first wife, Cynthia Powell Lennon, John Charles Julian ‘Jules’ Lennon is an accomplished musician and author in his own right.
Born April 8, 1963, in Liverpool, England, Julian is the eldest of the Beatles’ children. Named in honor of his paternal grandmother, Julian was the inspiration for the songs, “Hey Jude” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” After his parents divorced in 1968, young Lennon saw very little of his dad who remarried and started a new family with conceptual artist Yoko Ono in 1969.
In 1998, Lennon told a reporter at The Telegraph UK that his relationship with his dad remained ‘distant’ and uneasy until the guitarist’s murder in New York City in 1980.
Four years later, young Lennon released his first album. The well-received Valotte featured a poppy single, “Too Late for Goodbyes,” that achieved top 10 status on American and British music charts within weeks.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Jimi Hendrix was never shy to hide his admiration for The Beatles and, back in 1967, the iconic guitarist took things to the next level.
The night was June 4, 1967, Hendrix was stepping out on stage for his headline show at the Saville Theatre in London and, knowing that both Paul McCartney and George Harrison were in the audience, Hendrix decided to open the show with his rendition of Sgt. Pepper‘s title song.
While opening your own show with a cover song was a ballsy move, it was the sheer fact that The Beatles had only released the song three days prior to that moment which caused the greatest shock. With the record being made available on the Thursday, Hendrix had learnt the song and performed it live at his headline show by the Sunday.
“Jimi was a sweetie, a very nice guy. I remember him opening at the Saville on a Sunday night, 4th June 1967,” McCartney once recalled. “Brian Epstein used to rent it when it was usually dark on the Sunday. Jimi opened, the curtains flew back and he came walking forward, playing ‘Sgt. Pepper’, and it had only been released on the Thursday so that was like the ultimate compliment.”
Source: faroutmagazine.co.uk
You may not recognize Ron Campbell’s name, but it’s very likely that you’ve seen his work.
The Emmy and Peabody award-winning animator has worked on some of the most iconic cartoons ever made, including “Scooby-Doo,” “The Jetsons,” “Rugrats” and The Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” feature film. Residents of east Idaho can get a closer look at Campbell’s art when he brings Beatles Cartoon Art Show to the Willowtree Gallery in Idaho Falls on May 28 and 29.
The show features original paintings based on the characters Campbell animated while working on “The Beatles” animated series and “Yellow Submarine.” Animation fans can also see paintings based on other beloved characters Campbell helped bring to life throughout his five-decade long career, as well as chat with the animator himself about all things cartoons. They can even purchase pieces they like and take Campell’s work home with them.
Campbell’s interest in cartoons was sparked watching “Tom & Jerry” animated shorts in his local movie theater as a boy growing up in Australia.
Source: Adam Forsgren, EastIdahoNews.com
It wasn’t easy being the youngest member of a band that happened to include John Lennon and Paul McCartney. If you wanted respect, you had to play a mean lead guitar and deliver high-quality work when you got the chance to include a song on an album.
That’s exactly what George Harrison did for most of his time with The Beatles. As his songwriting powers grew in the late ’60s, George had to withhold some material and save it for his excellent debut solo album.
That eventually worked out fine for him. And, before everyone went their separate ways, he dropped “Something,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” and “Here Comes the Sun,” songs which most consider his best Beatles work.
Otherwise, George found himself writing tunes for albums like Sgt. Pepper’s only to see them bumped and/or rejected. In retrospect, that treatment didn’t do the Beatles lead-guitar player justice. Here are five songs Harrison wrote and recorded with the band that never got their due.
Source: cheatsheet.com
For better and – mostly – for worse, John Lennon essentially invented the phenomena of the ‘Rock Star’ as social-political activist. Having broken free of the perceived restraints put upon him whilst in The Beatles, Lennon’s early solo works are marked by an earnest, and in many cases naïve, search for integrity and meaning. Or as he put it in 1970: “I remember what it’s all about now you f**kers! F**k you all!” It was a pursuit which took Lennon to musical, political and personal extremes: from musique concrete back to blues-infused rock ‘n’ roll; from the bed-ins for peace to flirtations with Maoism; from heroin to primal scream therapy.
Yet in spite of the drama and energy of his private and public life, Lennon’s solo-music spectacularly failed to recapture the emotional weight and expression of his work with The Beatles. Neither ‘Mother’ nor ‘My Mummy’s Dead’ from Plastic Ono Band come close to channeling Lennon’s pain and feelings of parental abandonment in the same way that ‘Julia’ from the White Album does. Similarly, the two and a half minutes of ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’ contains more imagination than all forty minutes of ‘Imagine’. Why was it that, in putting self- expression, politics and philosophical substance at the forefront of his artistic agenda, Lennon’s music ended up failing to express both himself and everyday concerns with the same force as his work from the sixties?
Source: Basil Bowdler/cherwell.org
None of the Beatles' solo catalogs is flawless. But John Lennon's may be the most frustrating of the four, as you'll see in our list of the Best Song From Every John Lennon Album.
Like his bandmates, the earliest records under Lennon's name were conscious attempts to break from his past. But we've excluded the three experimental albums he made with Yoko Ono before he launched his solo career in earnest with 1970's John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, because, seriously, how does one choose between "Two Virgins Side One" and "Two Virgins Side Two"?
Still, things don't get any less complicated after those bumpy starts. Plastic Ono Band, for all of its critical acclaim and significance, is a cathartic soul-cleansing for the former Beatle, who pretty much worked through every issue that burdened his mind during the first three decades of his life. Not exactly what his old fans wanted to hear.
Source: ultimateclassicrock.com
Following the kick-off of this year's North American leg of his record-breaking FRESHEN UP Tour, PAUL McCARTNEY adds to his Summer of LIVE: Paul has confirmed updated releases of four albums capturing performances spanning from his 1975-1976 return to U.S. arenas with Wings to his intimate 2007 set at Amoeba records in Los Angeles. The albums — Amoeba Gig, Paul Is Live, Choba B CCCP, Wings Over America — will be released July 12, 2019 via MPL/Capitol/UMe digitally, on CD and on both black and limited-edition color vinyl.PAUL McCARTNEY DECADES-SPANNING “LIVE” ALBUM MILESTONE REISSUES - Paul has confirmed updated releases of four albums capturing performances spanning from his 1975-1976 return to U.S. arenas with Wings to his intimate 2007 set at Amoeba records in Los Angeles. The albums — Amoeba Gig, Paul Is Live, Choba B CCCP, Wings Over America — will be released July 12, 2019 via MPL/Capitol/UMe digitally, on CD and on both black and limited-edition color vinyl.
Source: prnewswire.com
Paul McCartney picked New Orleans, one of his favorite cities, to open the US leg of his Freshen Up tour.
On Thursday, May 23, seven songs into a 38-song show, McCartney told his adoring audience at the sold-out Smoothie King Center that he couldn’t think of “a better place to start it off than right here.”
Following his 2002 and 2014 concerts at the Smoothie King Center, McCartney launched his third appearance in the former New Orleans Arena with a pair of Beatles’ classics, 1964’s “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Can’t Buy Me Love,” and the 1974 Wings hit, “Junior’s Farm.”
Vintage film footage of McCartney with his fellow Beatles accompanied “Can’t Buy Me Love” on a giant video screen. After the aptly raucous “Can’t Buy Me Love,” the former Beatle paused to gaze at his fans. “This is so cool,” he said.
McCartney, who’ll be 77 on June 18, obviously doesn’t need the money his tours generate. Hugely successful for 56 years, he still loves performing. After Thursday’s two-and-a-half-hour plus concert in New Orleans, he said, “We’ll see you next time.”
Source: offbeat.com
