Beatles News
A tribute to British music hall. A “fantasy song.” A curious throwback, considering its 1968 origins. No matter how one chooses to describe it, “Honey Pie” reveals Paul McCartney’s continuing love of British music hall, big bands, and Hollywood musicals. It even owes a debt to jazz, as John Lennon performs a Django Reinhardt-inflected guitar solo. Like so many other Beatles tracks, “Honey Pie” results from a melting pot of influences, music that the foursome were reared on through television and film.
Despite being released on an album widely considered to be a time capsule of a turbulent year, “Honey Pie” traces its roots to the 1920s, specifically through a hugely popular London bandleader. Billy Cotton formed the London Savannah Band, his first orchestra, in 1924; originally a traditional English dance band, they transitioned into a music hall-style show featuring humor and even a tap dancer. After building a large following, Cotton debuted his first BBC radio show, the Billy Cotton Band Show, in 1949. The show proved so popular that hit was also broadcast on BBC television, beginning in 1957.
Source: Kit O'Toole/somethingelsereviews.com
The Beatles, like gravity and tacos, are easy to take for granted. You could live without them, maybe, but would life be the same? One day we might discover they’re the source of dark energy, the magical mystery stuff that drives the expansion of the universe.
Truth is, the lads from Liverpool weren’t just a band, they were a force that pushed the boundaries of culture. UC Santa Barbara’s Carsey-Wolf Center (CWC) will explore the group’s influence in “Beatles: Revolutions,” a five-film series beginning with the groundbreaking “A Hard Day’s Night,” screening Thursday, Jan. 17, at 7 p.m. in the campus’s Pollock Theater. All films in the series are free and open to the public, but reservations are recommended to guarantee a seat.
“We believe it is important to revisit the Beatles as a phenomenon at this moment because they serve as a lens for understanding the major cultural and political shifts of the long 1960s and the reverberations of those changes 50 years later — in and beyond popular culture,” said Patrice Petro, the Dick Wolf Director of the CWC and Presidential Chair in Media Studies.
Source: Jim Logan/news.ucsb.edu
Led Zeppelin’s music engineer, Glyn Johns spoke in an interview with SiriusXM and remembered the time when The Beatles guitarist George Harrison reacted to Led Zeppelin.
Here’s the story:
“I was working with The Stones around the same time this record [‘Led Zeppelin’] was made. We were putting together [1968’s] ‘The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus,’ which was a TV show which had a lot of different artists on it.
Just after I’d finished this record [‘Led Zeppelin’], I was going to a production meeting for that [‘The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus’].
We were all kicking around ideas of who should be on it and I took this record and played it at the production meeting to Mick [Jagger]. ‘Jimmy [Page] put this band together with John Paul Jones. It’s gonna be absolutely huge!’ But Mick didn’t get one side of it. Probably still doesn’t.
Source: Feyyaz Ustaer/metalheadzone.com
For all of their obvious populism—the ootsy-cutesy singalongs, the exhortations to love everyone and everything—the Beatles, in their most beat-loving, insectoid hearts, were purveyors of oddities. Not to the degree of a Frank Zappa or a Syd Barrett, but they loved getting their weird on, going back to John Lennon’s youthful days as a Goon Show nut who liked nothing more than drawing figures copulating in the margins of his school books, then making his classmates giggle.
Sometimes Beatles oddness took the form of early covers, especially in the early days—a show tune like “Till There Was You,” a girl-group number like “Boys,” pronouns and gender notions be damned. This put them far ahead of their time, and it also set them up for sonic experimentation that no one was yet dabbling in—Revolver and Sgt. Pepper, obviously. Paul McCartney has cited 1970 B-side “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)”—the official cut a Beatles nut is most unlikely to know—as his all-time fave by the band, precisely because of the spirit it invokes, a mad hatter’s call of We Will Not Be Hemmed In.
Source: Colin Fleming/thedailybeast.com
A run-down venue where the Beatles played their 'worst ever gig' to just three people has sold for just £1.
The historic Subscription Rooms in Stroud, Gloucester, hosted the Beatles in March 1962, a year before their big break.
The 183-year-old arts and entertainment centre has fallen on tough times and has been sold for a single pound by Stroud District Council to the Town Council, having been on the market for £600,000 nearly two years ago.
It was the group's first gig outside of either London or Hamburg and Sir Paul famously told the BBC it was their 'worst ever' performance.
Source: Daily Mail
So you've decided to start again. Good for you. Maybe you've finally found the courage to step toward a career you've always dreamed of pursuing. Maybe you're learning to respect yourself and your own boundaries, or maybe you've learned to hold yourself accountable and become the best version of yourself possible. Maybe you just feel like pressing "restart" and getting back on track - or maybe you said "screw it" to any tracks at all.
Whatever the case, it's a new day and a new you, and you deserve a killer soundtrack to keep you motivated and remind yourself why these changes are a good thing. In that case, we've put together 10 of our favorite songs about starting fresh and embracing the new. From dance music gems to classic favorites, these songs about change and new beginnings will keep you from slipping back into old habits.
Source: Kat Bein/billboard.com
Havana, (Prensa Latina) The Cinematheque of Cuba is organizing a The Beatles Week as of January 16 with a varied program in homage to the legendary English band.
According to a statement from that entity, the inauguration will be on January 16 at Cine 23 y 12, in downtown Havana, where the institution has its headquarters, and will be extended to the Charlie Chaplin hall until the 20th.
The Week will make available to the public records, images and books related to the life and career of the successful group formed in the city of Liverpool and recognized as the most praised by critics in the history of rock music.
Its influence on popular culture remains remarkable despite its disintegration and the passage of time.
Source: plenglish.com
A new video uses Google Maps to take Beatles fans on a world tour, covering more than 25,000 miles, using the group's lyrics as a guide.
Produced by Vanity Fair, the nearly 13-minute clip begins in their hometown of Liverpool. In addition to obvious places like Penny Lane and Strawberry Field, Beatles songs that reference their parents (like "Julia" and "Let It Be") are matched with John Lennon's and Paul McCartney's childhood homes.
After three-and-a-half minutes, the video turns from Liverpool to Blackburn ("A Day in the Life") and the Scottish town of Kircaldy ("Cry Baby Cry") before flying to London, where Buckingham Palace ("Her Majesty"), the Royal Albert Hall and the House of Lords and Bishopsgate ("Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!") are acknowledged.
Source: ultimateclassicrock.com
The critic Bill Wyman has ranked all 213 Beatles tracks from worst to best. You might be slightly surprised by his choice of the best.
And even more surprised that the worst is not by Ringo. At Beatles anniversary time, the stories write themselves. “It was 25/30/40 years ago today!” “The act you’ve known for all these years!” “A splendid time was guaranteed for all!” Last week’s 50th anniversary of the U.S. release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the most acclaimed rock album ever and the apogee of the Beatles’ cultural influence in the 1960s, is a time for all those chestnuts and more. But Pepper’s doesn’t make sense if it’s not put in context. And the only way to do that, given the weight of the Beatles’ presence, is to take a look at everything the band put on record over its eight-year recording career.
It turns out that ranking the songs recorded by the Beatles in the 1960s is easy; you put the worst one at the top, and the best one at the bottom.
Source: Slipped Disc
John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1972. The former Beatle once told music writer Ray Connolly that his childhood ambition was “to write ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and be Elvis Presley.” Connolly was set to interview Lennon on Dec. 9, 1980, but the rock star was killed Dec. 8. (AP Photo/Anthony Camerano)
Why another biography of John Lennon? Surely, almost 40 years after his death, there can be nothing left to say about this endlessly famous man? Veteran British music journalist Ray Connolly thinks there is, and so it is that “Being John Lennon: A Restless Life” takes its place on an already very crowded shelf. After reading this likable and workmanlike but hardly revelatory book, whether he is right remains an open question.
Source: Michael Lindgren/washingtonpost.com
