Beatles News
It seemed like the whole world was watching “The Ed Sullivan Show” on Feb. 9, 1964. Except Lori Benton. Her parents “forced me to go to church on Sunday nights,” she said.
So Benton missed a major milestone in the history of Western civilization: The Beatles’ first appearance before the astonished eyes and ears of America.
She eventually gained some musical freedom. Benton remembers spinning pop, folk and blues 45s on her brother’s little turntable: Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles.
“It sure opened up a whole world beyond church hymns,” Benton laughed. “I became an avid rock ‘n’ roll fan. It was fabulous.”
Benton recently relocated from Portland to Vancouver, but she was back downtown, at the Oregon Historical Society Museum, on a recent afternoon to visit a fun, impressively thorough traveling exhibit about the Fab Four’s early, touring years. The exhibit remains on display through Nov. 12 — featuring rare American tour memorabilia, TV and film clips, audio interviews with Beatles, their professional colleagues and their star-struck fans; there are even a couple of interactive opportunities to sit in for Ringo on drums and vocals.
Source: columbian.com
It’s tough trying to figure out who wrote what in a Lennon-McCartney song from 1965 and earlier. In those days, they often composed (in John’s words) “in each other’s nose” and “eyeball to eyeball.” That’s how “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and other tunes came to be.
Later, when Paul spun tunes like “Let It Be” and “Hey Jude,” you can’t mistake it for anyone but him. The same goes for John’s “Yer Blues” and “Come Together.” They could only have been written by one person.
After the band split up, the old songwriting partners often answered questions about who was behind some of their best-loved songs. More often than not, Paul and John agreed about who wrote the tunes. However, there were two occasions when their recollections differed.
One of the disagreements came over the classic “In My Life” from 1965’s Rubber Soul. While no one disputes John had the idea and wrote all the lyrics, Paul claimed he wrote the music. But everyone from John to Beatles producer George Martin and university data scientists have disagreed.
Source: cheatsheet.com
John Lennon may be most famous for his round sunglasses, but any piece of his closet could be considered iconic.
And now, a blue tracksuit once owned by the late singer — who was killed by Mark David Chapman in 1980 at the age of 40 — can be yours. According to TMZ, the outfit is going up for auction through the memorabilia company Moments in Time, with the asking price set at $35,000.
The tracksuit itself is just as special as its former owner; John wore a matching set with wife Yoko Ono when they traveled to Denmark in 1970 to visit her ex-husband Tony Cox and their 6-year-old daughter, Kyoko.
The trip was meant to help mend fences between Ono and Cox, who were locked in a bitter custody dispute over Kyoko. While it worked for a time, Cox eventually won custody the following year, and Ono did not see her daughter again until 1998.
Source: Melissa Minton/pagesix.com
Last week, our high school-age grandson, Aidan, said something that shocked us: “Who’s Paul McCartney?”
We were discussing the singer/songwriter’s upcoming June 6 Kohl Center concert, one of two Wisconsin dates along with Green Bay’s Lambeau Field, that are part of his “Freshen Up” tour.
How could a musical icon of McCartney’s stature draw no more than a blank stare from a member of the emerging generation?
Lest we forget, McCartney, along with John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, were collectively The Beatles, credited with almost single-handedly changing the timbre and texture of popular music in the mid-20th century. Bursting on the U.S. music scene in 1964 with a youthful exuberance and a playlist of silly love songs, the Four Lads from Liverpool pushed aside Elvis Presley and his pomaded pompadour with their mop-top haircuts, collarless suits and Marx Brothers antics.
Paul was the heartthrob, the “cute Beatle.” John was the intellectual — he wrote and illustrated two books of surrealistic poetry. George was the quiet one, and Ringo was, well, Ringo. Paul, 76, and Ringo, 78, both of whom have been knighted by England’s Queen, are still alive and performing. John died in 1980 at age 40 of a gunshot wound, murdered in the street outside his New York City apartment. George died in 2001 at age 58 of lung cancer, which had spread to his brain, in his Los Angeles home.
Source: Michael Muckian/isthmus.com
The birthplace of The Beatles has imagined life without the Fab Four as the new Danny Boyle and Richard Curtis film was shown at a special screening in Liverpool.
Yesterday, a film in which struggling musician Jack finds he is the only person to remember the songs of John, Paul, George and Ringo, was shown in the city on Wednesday a month ahead of its official release date.
The special screening at FACT was attended by those who helped with the creation of the Universal film, parts of which were filmed in Liverpool, although the cast did not attend.
Lily James and Himesh Patel (left) during the shooting of a scene for Danny Boyle’s new film (Joe Giddens/PA)
Written by Curtis and directed by Boyle, the movie follows Jack, played by Eastenders’ actor Himesh Patel, as he wakes from a freak accident to find no one else in the world remembers the songs made famous by The Beatles.
Source: independent.ie
Acclaimed writer Kenneth Womack will release his latest book on The Beatles when Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles arrives this October. The book will look to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of the band’s Abbey Road studio album in 2019.According to the book’s announcement via press release, Solid State will look to offer the most definitive account yet of the writing, recording, mixing, and reception of Abbey Road, which was initially released in September 1969. The 288-page hardcover book will be Womack’s latest publication on the famous British rock band. Previous books penned by Womack include The Beatles Encyclopedia: Everything Fab Four (2014), The Cambridge Companion to the Beatles (2009), Long and Winding Roads: The Evolving Artistry of the Beatles (2007), and Reading the Beatles: Cultural Studies, Literary Criticism, and the Fab Four (2006), just to name a few.
Source: Tom Shackleford/liveforlivemusic.com
There were no dispensable Beatles. That has been the case since the group decided to fire Pete Best and hire Ringo to join the band full-time in 1962. In the late years, the band would test the theory that they could do without one member.
The first chance came when a dejected Ringo left town while The Beatles slogged though the recording of The White Album. After a few weeks, the band realized it couldn’t go on without him and begged him to come back from Italy. (He returned with “Octopus’s Garden” in his songbook.)
Early the following year, George Harrison became the second man to take leave of the group. After considering replacements for their lead guitarist, The Beatles brought George back within 10 days.
Both those incidents suggested major problems for the band, but the day had yet to come when John Lennon or Paul McCartney decided he’d had it. When that happened in late ’69, The Beatles’ end was clearly in sight.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Long-lost footage of a legendary performance by The Beatles is to be shown for the first time in more than 50 years after it was recently unearthed and restored.
The Fab Four's only live appearance on the BBC TV music show "Top of the Pops," on June 16, 1966, was believed to be lost forever -- except for an 11-second, silent clip discovered by a collector in Mexico in April this year.
But then David Chandler, another collector and music enthusiast, contacted Kaleidoscope, an organization that recovers video and TV shows, and handed it a series of 8 mm film reels.
The footage, which includes a 92-second performance by The Beatles playing "Paperback Writer," lasts 9 minutes in total and also shows Dusty Springfield singing "Goin' Back," Tom Jones singing "Green, Green Grass of Home," The Hollies performing "Bus Stop," and other performances by The Spencer Davis Group, Ike and Tina Turner, and Cliff Richard and the Shadows.
"Kaleidoscope thought finding 11 seconds of Paperback Writer was incredible, but to then be donated 92 seconds -- and nine minutes of other 1966 Top of the Pops footage -- was phenomenal," said Kaleidoscope CEO Chris Perry in a statement.
Source: Gianluca Mezzofiore, CNN
September 2019 marks the golden anniversary of the Beatles' multi-platinum album Abbey Road - the last work they recorded before their seismic breakup. Released in September 1969, it was the end of both the Sixties and the biggest and greatest band of all time.
To explore this anniversary, the world's leading Beatles historian, Mark Lewisohn - whose highly-acclaimed Tune In is the first part of the band's definitive biography - will embark on a 21-date UK tour with his newly-created Abbey Road show HORNSEY ROAD.
This two-hour live theatre presentation - full of surprises, delights, humour and excitement - will be a swift and smart illustrated history of our forever national-heroes the Beatles and their biggest album Abbey Road, providing a unique insight into the band who changed the course of culture and whose influence is still substantial.
Source: broadwayworld.com
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
