Beatles News
The Beatles legend Ringo Starr has a defiant remark when he was asked about approaching a major milestone.
The drummer will mark his 85th birthday next month. However, Ringo appears to take exception whenever someone mentions his age, reports the Daily Mail. “It’s another birthday. No one does anything these days without mentioning your age,” the former Fab Four member said.
In recent months fans have commented on Ringo’s “unbelievable” energy during recent live shows. It came as the Yellow Submarine creator impressed them with his onstage antics, reports the Express. Commenting on his performances on social media, one fan wrote: "Ringo Starr at 84-years-old. Unbelievable."
Another expressed their joy that both Ringo and fellow former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney are still performing over 65 years after forming the band. They wrote: “Ringo Starr at 84 is unbelievable. We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you’ve consented to and improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and third parties based on our knowledge of you. More info
“I love that he and Paul McCartney are still out there touring, performing and rocking and rolling. I'm happy for them, but it makes me miss John Lennon and George Harrison." Ringo, whose real name is Richard Starkey, has had a successful solo career, toured with the All-Starr Band, and branched out into the world of film and TV after the Beatles. He even narrated two series of Thomas & Friends.
He has often attributed his spritely performances to the fact he likes to his healthy lifestyle and diet. Previously, he said: “I tend to work out and keep as busy as I can. I'm a vegetarian, I eat lots of berries, lots of fruit and lots of vegetables and salad."
Source: themirror.com/Matt Jackson
The Beatles' legendary status is undisputed, but there are ongoing debates about their best live performance. Even though they stopped touring in 1966 due to the strain of performing for audiences, Ringo Starr, the band's drummer, and their fans can't seem to agree on the group's top concert.
After a brief reunion for an impromptu gig on the roof of Abbey Road studios, The Beatles never returned to a stadium or concert hall following their last tour in 1966. During their controversial US tour, marked by John Lennon's statement that they were "bigger than Jesus," many believe The Beatles gave their most outstanding live performance.
This show is not only considered possibly The Beatles' greatest live spectacle, but it also stands out as one of the first major arena stadium concerts.
One fan posted online: "I was just thinking about how 'The Beatles at Shea Stadium' was the first ever major concert in an arena stadium. Has anyone seen the film?" On August 11, 1966, The Beatles performed a short setlist of 11 songs at New York's Shea Stadium.
However, these 11 songs have made a significant mark in music history, with many fans declaring them the peak of The Beatles' live performances. Released on this day [May 1] in 1966, the Shea Stadium show continues to be hailed as one of the most extraordinary concerts to date, reports the Liverpool Echo.
Source: themirror.com/Ewan Gleadow, Hollie Beale
By the time the Beatles called it a day in late 1969, they’d recorded and released more than 200 songs — most of them originals — and left dozens more in the vault. While the bulk of those unissued tracks ranged from rough demos to jams, several were completed recordings that, for one reason or another, they rejected.
Among them was a song that was the first ever written expressly for drummer Ringo Starr: “If You’ve Got Trouble.” Composed by John Lennon for inclusion on 1965’s Help!, the song was a riff-driven rocker built around the I-IV-V chords common to blues and rock. In many respects it bears similarity to a few other Beatles tracks from this period, including “She’s a Woman,” “I’m Down” and “I Feel Fine,” another Lennon-composed riff rocker, albeit one with a great deal more sophistication than “If You’ve Got Trouble.”
From the start of the Beatles’ recording career, Starr was given a vocal spot on each of their albums (except for 1964’s A Hard Day’s Night) in order to please his rabid fan base. It may be hard to fathom today, but for at least the first year of Beatlemania, Starr was the most popular Beatle, certainly in America, where his friendly, down-to-earth demeanor made him a favorite. It’s little wonder he got his own sizable scene in the Beatles’ debut film, A Hard Day’s Night, and was the main focus of its followup, 1965’s Help!
Because Starr wasn’t a songwriter, he sang either covers — “Boys,” on 1963’s Please Please Me, and “Honey Don’t” on 1964’s Beatles for Sale — or inferior cast-offs composed by Lennon and McCartney, such as “I Wanna Be Your Man,” a throwaway from 1963’s With the Beatles, and “What Goes On,” from 1965’s Rubber Soul.
Source: guitarplayer.com/Christopher Scapelliti
As the news of Brian Wilson’s passing reverberates around the music world, it’s heartening to know that his contributions are celebrated by artists young and old. Paul McCartney, one of Wilson’s biggest admirers, has called The Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” the “greatest song ever written.”
The quote comes from Charles Granata’s 2003 book Wouldn’t it Be Nice: Brian Wilson and the Making of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, and McCartney reiterated his affection for the song in a 2007 interview with BBC Radio 1, where he discussed why “God Only Knows” means so much to him. “It’s one of the few songs that reduces me to tears every time I hear it,” McCartney said. “It’s really just a love song, but it’s brilliantly done. It shows the genius of Brian.” (For what it’s worth, we agree with his assessment.)
McCartney’s respect for Wilson extends beyond just “God Only Knows.” Over the years, he’s often reflected on how Wilson’s musical innovations shaped his own work with The Beatles. “Brian Wilson sort of proved himself to be a really amazing composer,” McCartney told The Ronnie Wood Show in 2012. “I was into chords and harmonies and stuff at that time, and we ended up with kind of like a rivalry. We put a song out and Brian would hear it, and then he’d do one. Which is nice – it’s like me and John. You know, you kind of try and top each other all the time.” Watch a clip of McCartney discussing Wilson, his performance of “God Only Knows” alongside him for a benefit concert, and the genius of his songwriting below, as well as a clip from the duo’s performance together.
Source: Paolo Ragusa/consequence.net
Yesterday, the Beach Boys legend Brian Wilson died aged 82, as celebrity tributes poured in. Both surviving Beatles, Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Ringo Starr, were influenced by the Californian’s music and knew him personally. Now the 82-year-old and almost 85-year-old have paid tribute on social media with pictures of him.
Macca wrote: “Brian had that mysterious sense of musical genius that made his songs so achingly special. The notes he heard in his head and passed to us were simple and brilliant at the same time. I loved him, and was privileged to be around his bright shining light for a little while. How we will continue without Brian Wilson, ‘God Only Knows’. Thank you, Brian. - Paul”
Meanwhile, Ringo added: “God bless Brian Wilson. Peace and love to all his family. Ringo.”
Source: express.co.uk
Growing up as the son of Beatles legend Ringo Starr wasn't the easiest for drummer Zak Starkey.
The ex-Oasis drummer, 59 - who was recently sacked from The Who - said he struggled to get the approval from his father when performing in front of him.
Zak admitted the rock 'n' roll legend, 84, would often brutally slate his drumming skills and say 'the most cutting f****** s***'.
Speaking to The Sun about their relationship, Zak reflected: 'My dad never opened the doors for me. 'He’d watch me and say the most cutting f****** s***. But he is the greatest rock ’n’ roll drummer in the world. He’s better now than he was then.'
From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the Daily Mail's showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. Growing up as the son of Beatles legend Ringo Starr, 84, wasn't the easiest for drummer Zak Starkey, 59 (pictured together in 2016)
The ex-Oasis drummer - who was recently sacked from The Who - said he struggled to get the approval from his father when performing in front of him. Zak also insisted there is 'no grudge' with his former The Who bandmates after he was sacked last month.
He told the publication: 'There’s no grudge, it’s f***ing music. In the beginning they were the maddest band. Pete is incredibly intimidating - he gobbed on my drum riser.'
Guitarist Pete Townshend took to Instagram to announce that Zak, the Who's drummer since 1996, was no longer part of the band.
Source: dailymail.co.uk/Lily Jobson
In early June 1969, the Beatles scored what would be their last No. 1 song (which also happened to be one of their most controversial) before their split later that year. Interestingly, only two of the Fab Four are on the track, signaling the fractures that would dismantle the band as a whole months later.
Paul McCartney recalled John Lennon being in an “impatient” mood when the latter Beatle brought the song to his bandmate. “I was happy to help,” McCartney would later say. Based on the song’s chart performance, everyone else was happy to hear it.
By the time (some of) the Beatles got into the studio at Abbey Road to start recording “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” they were already on the verge of splitting up for good. As the title would suggest, John Lennon was well into his relationship with Yoko Ono, having recently married her two months prior to the recording session in March 1969. Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were also branching out individually. In fact, the bandmates’ separation was the impetus for only Lennon and McCartney recording the track in the first place.
“By the time we came to record Abbey Road and Let It Be, things were really disintegrating,” McCartney recalled in a 2004 interview with Uncut. “Especially between me and John. It was a very nervy time. The atmosphere was uncomfortably heavy when we got together. I just remember when John came round to my house, and he wanted me to help him finish up “The Ballad of John and Yoko.” He mainly had it all down. I didn’t do much on it. But he wanted me to help with the recording.”
Source: americansongwriter.com/Melanie Davis
John Lennon is considered by many to be a poet. But the Beatle revealed his more prosaic side in a letter penned in 1962 to his future wife Cynthia Powell, in which he declared: “I wish I was on the way to your flat with the Sunday papers and chocies and a throbber.”
The intimate missive, which includes a complaint about his bandmate Paul McCartney’s snoring, is now being sold at auction by Christie’s with a £30,000 to £40,000 estimate.
Written over five nights after concerts during their Hamburg residency in April 1962, Lennon, then aged 21, wrote: “I love love love you and I’m missing you like mad … I wish I was on the way to your flat with the Sunday papers and chocies and a throbber.
“I wonder why all the newspapers wrote about Stu … I haven’t seen Astrid since the day we arrived I’ve thought of going to see her but I would be so awkward.
“Paul’s leaping about on my head (he’s in a bunk on top of me and he’s snoring) … Shurrup Mcarntey [sic]!”
Source: theguardian.com/Jamie Grierson
She's Leaving Home was one of the most spellbinding moments on the Beatles’ 1967 magnum opus Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. A heartstring-tugging document of coming of age angst, its sweeping orchestral arrangement supported a lyric that was inspired by a very real story.
The Paul McCartney-penned narrative gently expanded on a young girl’s decision to leave her stuffy, conservative parents’ home and - at Wednesday morning at 5 o’clock (as the day begins) - sneaks out to join the man (from the motor trade) that she was going to start her new life with.
Marrying sentiment with rebellion, She's Leaving Home balances a sympathetic, and nostalgic, longing for the past with the increasing rejection of conservatism then rife within 1960s youth culture.
This was characterised by its parent-perspective chorus lyric - sung in typically spine-tingling fashion by John Lennon.
We're not the first to say it, and we won't be the last, but it's wonderful stuff all round. But the unlikely, fateful layers behind its origin deepen its magic…
Firstly, there's that newspaper story that McCartney based his lyric on. Within the February 27th 1967 edition of the Daily Mail, a story that ran with the headline 'A-level girl dumps car and vanishes', detailed how a young schoolgirl - Melanie Coe - had disappeared from her family home in London’s Stamford Hill. Not even taking her car (an Austin 1100) or any of her wardrobe full of clothes - only the clothes she was wearing that day.
This had lead her extremely worried parents to contact the national press, with her father telling the paper that, “I cannot imagine why she should run away. She has everything here… even her fur coat.”
Melanie, whose hasty exit was spurred by finding out that she was pregnant, would later turn up safe and sound. She wasn't aware that the newspaper story had inspired She's Leaving Home until many years later.
In later life, she explained to the press that while her parents did in fact provide her with all the material possessions she could ever need, what she wanted most of all was some kind of emotional closeness. "As a 17-year-old I had everything money could buy - diamonds, furs, a car - but my father and mother never once told me they loved me,” Coe told the Daily Mail in 2007, echoing the dynamic presented in McCartney's lyric.
Source: musicradar.com/Andy Price
On This Day, June 11, 2002…
Beatles legend Paul McCartney married his second wife, Heather Mills, a former model and activist, whose leg was amputated in 1993 after she was run over by a police motorcycle in London.
The couple wed at Castle Leslie in the village of Glaslough in County Monaghan, Ireland, with the celebration attended by several celebrities, including McCartney’s Beatles bandmate Ringo Starr.
The wedding took place four years after the death of McCartney’s first wife, Linda McCartney, from cancer.
McCartney and Mills welcomed their first and only child together, daughter Beatrice, in 2003, and three years later announced they had separated, with their acrimonious divorce finalized in 2008.
McCartney went on to marry a third time, to New Yorker Nancy Shevell, in 2011. They are still married to this day.
Source: everettpost.com/ABC News
Beatles Journal: 1964 Specialty Journal 