Beatles News
Sir Paul McCartney bought his farm in Kintyre before he met Linda but it was her love of its "wildness and freedom" that created so many happy memories.
The former Beatle says the west of Scotland peninsula was one of their favourite places in the world and photographs from their time on High Park Farm form part of a new retrospective of Linda's work, being shown at Glasgow's Kelvingrove art gallery.
The pictures of rural Scottish life sit alongside photos of music legends such as Jimi Hendrix and Aretha Franklin which Linda took before the couple settled into their newfound home.
Sir Paul, now 77, told BBC Radio Scotland's Ricky Ross Meets programme his late wife was a trailblazing photographer before the pair got together and raised a family.
Source: Steven Brocklehurst BBC Scotland News
Popular music changed forever on March 22, 1963 when Please Please Me, the debut album from the Liverpool quartet called the Beatles was released. The 14 song session included the #1 title single, one of seven originals penned by the writing team of John Lennon and Paul McCartney
The British Invasion had begun. In a way, it never ended.
Sir Paul McCartney plays B.C. Place this week and the legacy of his former band — as well as his solo career — lives on well past most of his original musical peers. What it is that makes the man and his music matter more than most is the subject of countless books, papers and bottomless barroom banter. How four teenagers from the Northwest of England turned rock ‘n’ roll on its head is now contemporary cultural history played out in song.
Source: Allen McInnis / Montreal Gazette
“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
