Beatles News
Sir Paul McCartney has helped a Perth man propose to his girlfriend 10 years after the couple met on a Contiki tour and bonded over their love of the Beatles.
Martin held a sign up at the rock icon's concert on Saturday night and was brought to the stage during the encore to pop the question to Saya, with McCartney instructing him to get down on one knee.
He then signed Saya's Beatles jacket and joked: "It's going straight up on eBay."
The clearly overwhelmed couple hugged McCartney and thanked him for making their night special as he kicked off the Australian leg of his One on One world tour, but they weren't the only ones.
The crowd lapped up every minute of the Englishman's set, which ran for more than three hours and included many beloved Beatles and Wings hits.
The show opened with classics, including A Hard Day's Night and Can't Buy Me Love, before McCartney took his jacket off.
"That was the one and only wardrobe change of the evening," he quipped.
Unlike many pop stars, McCartney never needed flashy costumes.
He shook his bottom, strummed several guitars and played the piano with so much energy, it's hard to believe he is 75 years old.
His bandmates were equally enthusiastic and the music was loud, but not so much that it drowned out the sound of McCartney's still relatively strong voice.
It was about halfway through the concert when McCartney requested a "Beatles scream" from the audience and they happily obliged.
"Take me back, baby!" he enthused.
Source: AAP
Sir Paul McCartney has donated a rare album to raise funds for the families of Eilidh MacLeod and Laura MacIntyre.
Eilidh, 14, died in the Manchester Arena attack on May 22, while her friend Laura, 15, was seriously injured.
Soon after the tragedy Sir Paul donated a special Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band 6 Disc Super Deluxe (50th Anniversary Edition) box-set which will be auctioned to raise funds for the two families, who are from Barra in the Outer Hebrides.
The album will be personally dedicated and personalised to the successful bidder.
It will be auctioned in the run-up to the 40th anniversary of one of Sir Paul’s Wings songs Mull of Kintyre reaching number 1 at Christmas in 1977.
The girl’s parents said the gesture is “amazing and brilliant’.
Source: Manchester Evening News
She's fast approaching the big 5-0.
But the ever youthful Heather Mills, 49, rolled back the years in a backless floor length floral gown at the Brilliant Is Beautiful gala in London on Friday.
The former wife of Paul McCartney showed off her enviable figure as she posed for pictures along the red carpet clearly lapping up the attention.
Chic: Heather Mills, 49, rolled back the years in a backless floor length floral gown at the 'Brilliant Is Beautiful' gala in London on Friday. The former wife of Paul McCartney showed off her enviable figure as she posed for pictures along the red carpet, lapping up the attention
Turning heads in the floor length dress, Heather posed cheekily in the dress which boasted semi-sheer inserts along the seem. And twirling for pictures, she flashed the flesh with a backless insert fastened at the neck.
Heather's dress, with Japanese lily flourishes, was tapered in around the waist before billowing out to skim the floor.
Letting her short blonde tresses fall to her shoulders, Heather wore a smattering of light makeup to highlight her natural good looks.
Source: Daily Mail
Kenneth Womack’s new book on George Martin
is the first of two volumes (the second comes out next year), and it seems to be the first biography of the Beatles producer, which is kind of surprising. That alone makes Maximum Volume: The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin, The Early Years 1926-1966
a significant work in and of itself (although Martin himself wrote a pair of memoirs in the ’90s, the first of which—1994’s All You Need Is Ears
—Womack sources for insight into his early years).
Womack's book, perhaps unsurprisingly, is dominated by Martin’s working relationship with the Beatles, which began in 1962—quite late in the 40 years this first volume surveys—but takes up more than three quarters of the text. While Martin’s pre-Beatles years are covered more than adequately, it might have been fun to dive deeper into his groundbreaking work producing comedy records with the likes of Beyond the Fringe and Peter Sellers, much of which demanded wild creativity in the studio and stood him in good stead when the Beatles began to expand beyond their two-guitars-bass-and-drums sonic template. Britain’s “satire boom” of the early ’60s contributed a huge part to the Beatles’ DNA, something that often gets overlooked by critics and fans.
Source: Portland Mercury
Paul McCartney, one of the two remaining Beatles, will appear in Australia for the first time in 24 years.
McCartney will kick off his highly-anticipated One On One tour at nib Stadium in Perth on Saturday but on Thursday, at an undisclosed time, 20 of his fans have been invited via social media to take part in a QA at the Regal Theatre in Perth.
The time at which they will get to meet their idol won't be revealed until Thursday morning and phones won't be allowed in to the QA.
McCartney will also be performing in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Auckland on the tour but this fan event will be exclusive to Perth.
McCartney's last tour of Australia and New Zealand was in 1993 as part of The New World Tour, while a promoted tour in 2002 was cancelled after the Bali bombings.
Source: Sky News
Ringo Starr announced today (Nov. 29) a revamping of his long-running lineup of his All Starr Band for a 2018 tour of Europe and Israel. (See dates below.)
Re-joining the All Starr Band for the 2018 dates is Colin Hay. The former Men at Work frontman previously performed with the lineup in 2008. Joining for the first time is 10cc co-founder Graham Gouldman. In addition to co-writing the 10cc songs “I’m Not in Love” and “The Things We Do For Love,” Gouldman penned such British Invasion hits as the Hollies’ “Bus Stop” and the Yardbirds’ “For Your Love,” among many others.
Continuing with the All Starr Band are Santana/Journey star Gregg Rolie, Toto’s Steve Lukather, Warren Ham and Gregg Bissonette.
Most recently, Starr, who turned 77 on July 7, toured the U.S. in October and November offering a combination of songs that he sang lead for The Beatles (“With a Little Help From My Friends” and “Yellow Submarine,” among them) as well as many solo hits (including “It Don’t Come Easy” and “Photograph”).
Source: bestclassicbands.com
Another week, another essential new mag from the Uncut stable. Following the success of our David Bowie: A Life In Pictures (which you can still buy here), our next special is The Beatles: A Life In Pictures, an extravaganza of rare and in some cases totally unseen photographs, stylishly presented in a mirrored cover. It goes on sale this Friday in the UK, but you can already order The Beatles: A Life In Pictures from our online shop.
John Robinson, who edited this one, can explain more…
“The Beatles: A Life In Pictures is a lavish tribute to the four lads who shook the world. Fashions come and go, but The Beatles still amaze us with their music.
Fifty years on from their classic album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, their stature is completely undiminished, and this fresh new selection of pictures – many seldom-seen; some previously unpublished – tells their story, and helps to explain some of that enduring appeal.
Source: uncut.co.uk
A certain Beatle once sang that it don’t come easy. That was Ringo, but in this case, he could be referring to the steady career climb of Dhani Harrison. As the son of George, Harrison could have easily been saddled by the weight of his famous last name. Instead, he’s quietly cobbled together a career that children of Beatles would be envious of.
In late July, Harrison did something that many would have suspected he’d done a long time before. Though fairly mundane in terms of being a major shock, Harrison performed under his own name for the first time. His show at the Echo in Los Angeles was an intimate affair, but it was also sold out instantly with little fanfare ahead of it.
“I don’t get too nervous, but I’m a perfectionist,” Harrison says as he’s cruising across Los Angeles on a late afternoon following a haircut. “The first shows are always a little bit frustrating but everyone had a great time.”
For years, he was just a face in the crowd as a member of rock outfit thenewno2. There, Harrison learned how to work within a rock band on his own that put together some stellar albums. They toured and performed at festivals like PJ20 (where Harrison sang “State of Love and Trust” with Pearl Jam) Lollapalooza and everything else of that sort. He also jammed with Ben Harper and Joseph Arthur in Fistful of Mercy, a band that rocks as heavy as its name would indicate.
Source: Daniel Kohn
For decades, he was a figure of fun — respectful fun, of course, but still. He was the most lovable of the lovable mop-tops, the most good-natured member of that most good-natured of bands, The Beatles. But of all the things you might think of Ringo Starr for — wry comic relief, cute off-key singing on “Yellow Submarine,” the ability to get along with everyone in a group that eventually, contentiously disintegrated — you might not think of him as a drummer, the same way you’d think of Keith Moon or Charlie Watts or Max Roach as a drummer.
“Ringo’s personality used to out-charm his musicianship,” says Rob Sheffield, an acclaimed music journalist whose recent book, Dreaming The Beatles, finds fresh things to say about the world’s most chronicled band. “In a way we had to get more sophisticated as listeners to catch up with what Ringo was doing musically, as a drummer," Sheffield writes via email. "Like the rest of The Beatles, except much more so, he came on as a comic charmer in ways that tempted casual listeners to think he was doing something easy.”
Source: Scott Timberg
The Beatles were on a roll in 1967.
They not only had released what many fans consider their best-ever album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, they also were writing and recording new songs at such a pace that those fans – not to mention radio and retailers – could hardly be expected to keep up with them.
In fact, six weeks after Sgt. Pepper's came out in late May 1967, the Beatles released a new single, "All You Need Is Love," backed with "Baby, You're a Rich Man." Those two songs, along with a pair of tracks recorded at the start of the Sgt. Pepper's sessions and other more recent tracks, ended up on the U.S. edition of Magical Mystery Tour, which was released on Nov. 27, 1967.
In the U.K., the 11-song LP was pared down to a six-track double EP that came out almost two weeks later, on Dec. 8, and included only the songs recorded specifically for the Magical Mystery Tour film project the group aired on British television that Christmas. The remaining five cuts, pushed to Side Two of the U.S. release, were released as singles between February 1967 and all the way up to just a few days before the album came out.
It's a tricky release history that suits the scattershot nature of Magical Mystery Tour in general.
Source: Ultimate Classic Rock
