Beatles News
If I reach the age of 76, I hope I still have the stamina to attend a three-hour rock concert, never mind performing a demanding three-hour show like Paul McCartney did at the Smoothie King Center on Thursday night (May 23). McCartney is a superstar’s superstar. He would be one of the great singer-songwriters of the last half century, even if he had not been half of one of the greatest songwriting duos in the history of popular music.
The former British invader -- who co-composed much of The Beatles songbook with John Lennon -- is reputed to be a billionaire. His artistic legacy is assured. He could easily be sleeping like a log on some picturesque estate somewhere. Instead, he was working like a dog on the Smoothie King stage until 11 p.m., energetically recreating almost 40 classics from “A Hard Day’s Night” to “Maybe I’m Amazed” to “Hey Jude,” plus a few newer tunes just to prove he hasn’t lost his composer chops.
Source: nola.com
Hundreds of incredible never-before-seen images snapped by fans offer a tantalising glimpse of The Beatles' life away from concerts during their heyday.
Pictures dusted off from lofts and home drawers following a worldwide search show John Lennon standing with an admirer outside his Surrey home after she decided to knock on his door in 1968, and Paul McCartney putting his tie before a 1963 concert.
The Fab Four were also captured cycling on bicycles during filming for their single 'Help!' in 1965, which soared to number one in the US and UK charts, and crowning a carnival queen in Northwich near Liverpool.
They have been published in a book, along with further unseen images, titled The People's Beatles, following a call for pictures of band members by European photo company Photobox.
Source: Luke Andrews For Mailonline/dailymail.co.uk
“The Freshen Up” tour is McCartney’s first outing following the release of his brand new studio album, “Egypt Station,” released September 7 on Capitol Records and generating rave reviews.
The Paul McCartney live experience is everything any music lover could ever want from a show: Nearly three hours nightly of the greatest moments from the last 50 years of music, dozens of songs from McCartney’s solo, Wings and of course Beatles catalogues that have formed the soundtracks of our lives.
McCartney and his band have played an unparalleled range of venues and locations throughout the Americas, the UK, Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and all points between: outside the Coliseum in Rome, Moscow’s Red Square, Buckingham Palace, The White House, a free show in Mexico for over 400,000 people, the last ever show at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park where The Beatles played their final concert in 1966, a 2016 week in the California desert that included two headline sets at the historic Desert Trip festival and a jam-packed club gig for a few hundred lucky fans at Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, and even one performance broadcast live into Space!
Source: Shan Bailey/fox8live.com
By July 1968, one of the biggest and best bands in the world had more problems than you could count. Recording what eventually became The Beatles’ White Album, tensions between John Lennon and Paul McCartney nearly exploded into violence in the studio.
The following month, feeling unwanted, Ringo walked out on the band and hopped a plane to Italy, unsure if he’d ever return. By January of ’69, it was clear from the Let It Be documentary that George Harrison had his share of problems with band members as well.
George staged his own revolt that month, and by September the group heard John say he was leaving the band permanently. However, that didn’t end things. Let It Be still needed work in the studio. Meanwhile, the band’s contracts bound them together regardless of their wishes.
Source: cheatsheet.com
After dominating the Billboard charts together for most of the 1960s, the former members of The Beatles would have to see how they fared on their own, starting in 1970.
The early returns suggested they be fine as solo artists. Paul McCartney’s debut might not have been a major artistic success, but it did hit No. 1 in America. Later that year, George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass also grabbed the top spot on the Billboard 200.
George’s solo debut also included the first No. 1 single by a former Beatle (“My Sweet Lord”). When John Lennon released his debut in late ’70, he didn’t have the same type of commercial success. (It still sold well, just not on the same Fab-Four level.)
As of 1974, every former Beatle besides John (Ringo included) had landed a No. 1 single in the U.S. But that changed after Elton John stopped by a recording session for Lennon’s Walls and Bridges, his fifth solo effort.
Source: cheatsheet.com
The Beatles’ official Instagram page shared a rare photo from the 1960s and added the statement of George Harrison from an earlier interview.
Here is George’s statement:
“At that period, it was a perfect song because it was so simple – the message was so simple and it was a great excuse just to go right in the middle of that whole culture that was happening and give them a theme tune.
The Beatles fans commented on the photo with beautiful messages.
A fan named daisy.jamess commented:
“All these looks are so iconic.”
Another fan named a_rif2 said:
“The Beatles > 90% of today’s artists.”
The Beatles icon Paul McCartney discussed facing backlash from his colleagues for his decision to appear on a song with Kanye West that excessively used the N-word in a GQ interview. McCartney said he ultimately felt that rappers like West had ‘re-appropriated’ the word. McCartney also worked with Rihanna. “I mean, Rihanna is something else. She’s cool. So it was a great thrill, actually. I loved it. I feel a kind of privilege that they think I’m worthy of their world. I know I’m worthy of my world, but I didn’t know that they think I could fit.”
The song “All Day,” brought new challenges. “The big surprise was the use of the N-word,” McCartney says. (Multiple use, too. Forty-four times, to be precise.) Some people around McCartney saw this as a problem—”They said, ‘You can’t be connected to this'”—and McCartney suggests that he looked into the issue with some care. “There’s basically two schools of thought: One, that the N-word has been re-appropriated by black rappers and they’ve sort of taken the sting out of it. And the other point of view is Oprah’s point of view, which is that any use of the word denigrates black people, and I can see that, too.”
In the end, he decided to go with it. “I thought, you know, ‘It’s urban poetry. It’s Kanye.’ I like the record. I thought he did a really good job on it.”
Source: Brett Buchanan/alternativenation.net
It was supposed to be a vacation. Paul McCartney wanted to take his band someplace sunny and exotic to record a new album. That way, they could work and be tourists at the same time — the same reason every movie filmed in Hawaii has a better cast than it probably should. EMI, McCartney’s label, had a studio in the Nigerian city of Lagos, and that seemed nice enough to McCartney. He figured it would be a breezy, pleasant experience. It was not.
There were complicating factors. During a rehearsal on McCartney’s Scottish farm a week before recording started, McCartney got into an argument with guitarist Henry McCullough, and McCullough quit on the spot. And the night before the band left for Nigeria, drummer Danny Seiwell left the band, as well. At the time, Wings weren’t a hugely successful enterprise. They’d made hits, but critics had generally come to regard McCartney as a lightweight hack, at least compared to his ex-bandmates John Lennon and George Harrison. Now, suddenly, he was a lightweight hack whose band had three members instead of five, and he still had to make this damn album.
Nigeria was not the tropical paradise that McCartney had envisioned. Instead, it was a country recovering from a civil war and controlled by a military junta. Infrastructure had crumbled. Disease was rampant. And rather than relaxing in finery, McCartney had to make do with a studio that only had one eight-track recorder.
Source: Tom Breihan/stereogum.com
The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles (Cornell University Press, October 2019), acclaimed Beatles historian Kenneth Womack offers the most definitive account yet of the writing, recording, mixing, and reception of Abbey Road.
In February 1969, the Beatles began working on what became their final album together. Abbey Road introduced a number of new techniques and technologies to the Beatles' sound, and included "Come Together," "Something," and "Here Comes the Sun," which all emerged as classics.
Womack's colorful retelling of how this landmark album was written and recorded is a treat for fans of the Beatles. Solid State takes readers back to 1969 and into EMI's Abbey Road Studio, which boasted an advanced solid state transistor mixing desk. Womack focuses on the dynamics between John, Paul, George, Ringo, and producer George Martin and his team of engineers, who set aside (for the most part) the tensions and conflicts that had arisen on previous albums to create a work with an innovative (and, among some fans and critics, controversial) studio-bound sound that prominently included the new Moog synthesizer, among other novelties.
Source: BWW News Desk/broadwayworld.com
This summer, Sir James Paul McCartney will turn 77 years young, and even while he continues to put out new albums and tour the world several times over, his legacy of literally hundreds upon hundreds of songs remains undiminished. Five decades ago he was planning the end of his run with The Beatles, the Fab Four dropping both the "Yellow Submarine" soundtrack and the legendary "Abbey Road" in 1969. The following year would see the release of the Beatles' final album ("Let It Be") as well as McCartney's first-ever solo record. In the 49 years since then, he's been dropping decade-defining pop numbers that still illicit massive roars from concert crowds. "Beatlemania" isn't a time frame: it's a mindset.
So unite your hands across the water (water) and heads across the sky as we put together the ultimate Paul McCartney playlist. From his time with The Beatles to his collaboration with Rihanna and everything in between, let's take a look at all of the great songs from "Yesterday" and beyond.
Source: Evan Sawdey/yardbarker.com
