Yet Lennon's snide lyric still resonates – despite the fact that McCartney was the principal architect of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the iconic 1967 album that celebrates its 50th anniversary on June 1, 2107.
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Julian Lennon Teaches Eco Awareness in New Children’s Book – with a Tender Nod to His Rock-Legend Dad 11 April, 2017 - 0 Comments
Julian Lennon is teaching children how to “Imagine” a better world — and build it themselves.
Like his rock-icon father John Lennon, the 54-year-old musician, photographer, film producer and activist is using his art as a rallying cry.
With a little help from his friends, New York Times bestselling author Bart Davis and Croatian illustrator Smiljana Coh, he’s written Touch the Earth, the first in a planned trilogy of illustrated books designed to educate children on the fragile beauty of the planet — and what they can do to protect it.
Out Tuesday (just ahead of Earth Day on April 22), a portion of the proceeds will go to support the efforts of Lennon’s White Feather Foundation, which fights for environmental and humanitarian causes across the globe.
Lennon spoke to PEOPLE about Touch the Earth, its message and its touching connection to his late father.
PEOPLE: What moved you to write the book series?
Julian: After having written songs about environmental and humanitarian issues, worked as executive producer on several award winning documentaries and founded the White Feather Foundation, I asked myself what was next in that line of thought and direction. What could I do to reach people who were complacent about those very issues?
After a lovely chat with a dear friend of mine, Bart Davis — an incredibly talented writer — we mulled over the idea that [children] were the only age group I hadn’t really reached out to, as such. So we decided to play around with ideas, until we came up with the first book together.
By: Jordan Runtagh
Source: People
The storied “Beatles Ashram” awaits beyond a long and winding road across the Ganges River in Rishikesh, the Himalayan town where The Beatles lived in 1968 and composed their curious chapter of renunciation.
Nearly five decades later, the ashram is derelict yet still alive, a peaceful yet eerie abandoned ghost village that the Rajaji Tiger Reserve is now slowly consuming – like endless desires eating away humans and demigods of fame and fortune as The Beatles were circa 1967.
The iconic British band met Transcendental Meditation founder “Maharishi” Mahesh Yogi in London in 1967, and their India odyssey followed. And worldwide media attention followed them.
“I followed The Beatles to Rishikesh with my photographer colleague Raghu Rai,” Saeed Naqui reported in Indian newspaper The Statesman. “Almost every newspaper in the world had sent their senior reporters. Not to much avail, though. The ashram was out of bounds for the media.
” … We walked on ’til I spotted the Maharishi under a tree with The Beatles. I promptly sneaked Raghu Rai in and he took a shot with the aid of his zoom lens. The Statesman had its scoop.”
This printed interview appeared on April 9th 1970 as a press release in advance promotional copies of Paul McCartney's first solo album entitled 'McCartney.'
There have long been misconceptions that Paul had written the questions himself. Paul told the Canadian magazine 'Musical Express' in 1982, "That's one thing that really got misunderstood. I had talked to Peter Brown from Apple and asked him what we were going to do about press on the album. I said, 'I really don't feel like doing it, to tell you the truth,' but he told me that we needed to have something. He said, 'I'll give you some questions and you just write out your answers. We'll put it out as a press release.' Well of course, the way it came out looked like it was specially engineered by me." This was also confirmed in Peter Brown's book 'The Love You Make.'
In the press release interview, Paul answers questions about the future of the Beatles, concerns about the Beatles' new management, as well as questions about the writing and recording of his first solo album.
Paul is asked if the release of the 'McCartney' LP is a rest away from the Beatles or the start of a solo career, to which he replies that it is both. But when asked if he is planning a new album or single with the Beatles he answers in the negative. When questioned if he forsees a time when Lennon and McCartney will become an active songwriting partnership again, he answers directly and simply, "No." Is his break with the Beatles temporary or permanent? Paul's responds that he does not know. When asked the reason for his break with the group, Paul lists: "Personal differences, business differences, musical differences, but most of all because I have a better time with my family."
While John Lennon had privately left the Beatles months earlier, it was from this interview that the story of a Beatles' split spread instantly as news headlines around the world. On April 10th, the Daily Mirror ran a front-page story with the bold print headline, 'PAUL IS QUITTING THE BEATLES,' while CBS News in America declared, "The Beatles are breaking up."
By: Jay Spangler
Source: The Beatles Interviews
Death Of The Day Stuart Sutcliff - April 10, 1962 Hamburg, West Germany Cerebral hemorrhage 10 April, 2017 - 0 Comments
Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe (23 June 1940 – 10 April 1962) was a Scottish-born artist and musician best known as the original bassist for the Beatles. Sutcliffe left the band to pursue his career as an artist, having previously attended the Liverpool College of Art. Sutcliffe and John Lennon are credited with inventing the name, "Beetles", as they both liked Buddy Holly's band, the Crickets. The band used this name for a while until Lennon decided to change the name to "the Beatles", from the word beat. As a member of the group when it was a five-piece band, Sutcliffe is one of several people sometimes referred to as the "Fifth Beatle".
When the Beatles played in Hamburg, he met photographer Astrid Kircherr, to whom he was later engaged. After leaving the Beatles, he enrolled in the Hamburg College of Art, studying under future pop artist, Eduardo Paolozzi, who later wrote a report stating that Sutcliffe was one of his best students. Sutcliffe earned other praise for his paintings, which mostly explored a style related to abstract impressionism.
While studying in Germany, Sutcliffe began experiencing severe headaches and acute sensitivity to light. In the first days of April 1962, he collapsed in the middle of an art class after complaining of head pains. German doctors performed various checks, but were unable to determine the exact cause of his headaches. On 10 April 1962, he was taken to hospital, but died in the ambulance on the way.
By: Dave Strickson
Source: Wikipedia
The John Lennon who wrote Imagine could also be bitterly cruel. "So Sgt. Pepper took you by surprise," he sang, with vitriol, on How Do You Sleep? on his first solo album in 1971. "You better see right through that mother's eyes.
"Those freaks was right when they said you was dead/The one mistake you made was in your head."
Everyone immediately knew who Lennon was targeting: his fellow former Beatle and "old estranged fiance", Paul McCartney.
Lennon later apologised saying How Do You Sleep? was more about him, than McCartney.
Yet if you really need evidence Sgt. Pepper didn't take "Macca" by surprise, just look at the album cover. According to Rolling Stone magazine, Sgt. Pepper is the greatest album cover in history (followed by Never Mind The Bollocks by the Sex Pistols, and the Beatles White Album in third place).
At the time, it was easily the most expensive record sleeve ever produced (costing £3000 in artwork, compared to the usual £100). It was one of the first "gateway sleeves" (opening like a book). And it included not only the complete song lyrics but an insert with eccentric cardboard cut-outs (one of which was a Sgt. Pepper moustache).
By: Steve Meacham
Source: AFR Weekend
Is THIS the first-ever film footage of future Beatle Paul McCartney - aged 12? 05 April, 2017 - 0 Comments
Could this be the earliest recorded film footage of – a then 12-year-old – Paul McCartney?
Last month we asked whether the earliest piece of film showing future Beatles Paul, John Lennon and George Harrison, along with Paul’s brother, Mike McCartney, had been unearthed.
In that case, tiny figures in the distance were on screen for just a couple of seconds, but local historian and Fab Four fan Peter Hodgson, from Kirkby, was convinced the Liverpool City Police recruitment film from 1958 contained a world first.
Now Peter has scoured another You Tube film – Liverpool Trams: Green Goddesses Remembered, by Online Videos – and he said: “This is my finest find yet... absolute gold!
“It is circa 1955 and at one point a tram is seen heading down East Prescot Road, from Old Swan towards Page Moss, where Paul’s Aunty Jin and Uncle Harry lived.
“He is only on screen for a second but, comparing him with old pictures, I am 100% convinced that is Paul sitting at the window, at 29 miunutes and 25 seconds into the film. And is that his late mother, Mary, sitting behind him? It looks like her.”
Paul was born June 18, 1942, and so would have celebrated his 13th birthday in the summer of 1955.
By: Paddy Shennan
Source: The Liverpool Echo
Kaleidoscope Entertainment set to Release Beatles Film IT WAS FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY! THE BEATLES: SGT. PEPPER & BEYOND 05 April, 2017 - 0 Comments
Today Kaleidoscope Entertainment is delighted to announce that it will release the new Beatles documentary: IT WAS FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY! THE BEATLES: SGT. PEPPER & BEYOND in UK cinemas 26th May, including special Q&A previews across the UK, followed by its release on Digital 1st June (EST 01 June, TVOD 08 June) and DVD 3rd July.
The film will also be available on a special collector’s edition double-disc Blu-Ray and double-disc DVD with over 4.5 hours’ worth of exclusive bonus material. A special launch event is also planned in Liverpool, the home of The Beatles on the 1st June – the 50th Anniversary date of the Sgt. Pepper Album.
From the Emmy nominated director of Monty Python: Almost The Truth, Alan G. Parker (Rebel Truce: The Story of The Clash, Hello Quo, Never Mind the Sex Pistols, Who Killed Nancy) and produced by Reynold D’Silva and Alexa Morris, the film features incredible rare archival footage unseen since the 1960s. The film also features rare interviews with The Beatles’ original drummerPete Best, John Lennon’s sister Julia Baird, Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein’s secretary Barbara O’Donnell, Steve Diggle of the Buzzcocks, Beatles associate Tony Bramwell, Pattie Boyd’s sister Jenny Boyd, Hunter Davies, Simon Napier-Bell, Ray Connolly, Bill Harry, Philip Norman, Steve Turner, Andy Peebles, Freda Kelly and The Merseybeats.
Source: Fan Carpet
The most ambitious reissue yet of an individual album from the Beatles’ catalog is coming May 26 with an expanded and newly remixed edition of the Fab Four’s 1967 pop masterpiece, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
Consistently ranked by critics and fans among the most influential rock albums of all time, “Sgt. Pepper” is being reissued in multiple formats and editions, including new stereo and surround-sound audio mixes along with nearly three dozen previously unreleased recordings from the same sessions.
“It’s crazy to think that 50 years later we are looking back on this project with such fondness and a little bit of amazement at how four guys, a great producer and his engineers could make such a lasting piece of art,” Paul McCartney writes in a new introduction for the anniversary edition of a project that started out as his baby.
In a 1970 interview with Rolling Stone, John Lennon said, “It was a peak. Paul and I were definitely working together.”
Ringo Starr, the quartet’s other surviving member, writes in his introductory remarks to the new edition that “‘Sgt. Pepper’ seemed to capture the mood of that year, and it also allowed a lot of other people to kick off from there and to really go for it.”
Indeed, the Doors’ drummer, John Densmore, told The Times recently, “We were working on our second album, ‘Strange Days’ [in 1967] and while we were working on it, we got an early copy of ‘Sgt. Pepper’ and we just died. That made us experiment more, inspired us to try the Moog synthesizer, made us generally be wild and just say ‘What the hell?’”
By: Randy Lewis
Source: Los Angeles Times
James McCartney talks music, veganism, and his famous dad before Northampton show 04 April, 2017 - 0 Comments
Unlike his loquacious and chatty dad Paul, James McCartney is a man of few, but well-chosen words.
But get him one subject he is passionate about -- like animal rights and vegetarianism -- and he opens up a bit more.
"Hopefully animals won't be killed one day, preferably now as we live in the here and now, and they will be helped to live the lives they truly want to in their hearts," he said in a recent interview. "I know vegetarian/vegan/ayurvedic are the healthiest diets."
It's safe to say that McCartney will have plenty of vegetarian dining options when his tour hits Northampton at the Iron Horse Music Hall on April 7.
McCartney is touring in support of his latest record, "The Blackberry Train," on which he worked with legendary producer Steve Albini (of Nirvana and Pixies fame). The opening track, the jangling rocker, "Too Hard," also features George Harrison's son Dhani on guitar and vocals. McCartney indicated that he and Albini got right down to work when it came to making the record.
By: George Lenker
Source: Mass Live
Olivia Harrison Reveals Ringo Recently Stumbled Upon a Lost George Harrison Song 04 April, 2017 - 0 Comments
The Beatles' George Harrison, the "quiet one," was in truth a kaleidoscopic force of nature. His songs and musicianship -- both with the fab four and beyond -- have not just aged well, but have become straight-up classics enshrined in the firmament of the 20th century music canon.
Without "If I Needed Someone," "I Me Mine," "Something," "Taxman," "Here Comes the Sun," or "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," the four would have been unbearably less fabulous. The same goes for his myriad of envelope-exploding contributions, including his chiming 12-string Fireglo Rickenbacker used throughout Hard Day's Night, his #wtf time-warped backward guitar on "I'm Only Sleeping" and his tamboura from the astral plane on "Tomorrow Never Knows." Harrison's genius is best summed-up perhaps with yet another of his underrated brilliant album cuts: "It's All Too Much."
And it never stopped. Harrison's 1970 magnum opus/dam burst following the Beatles' dissolution, All Things Must Pass, is filled with sublime sounds. The raw harmonica-driven "Apple Scruffs" could have been a White Album classic, his prostration before the universe in "My Sweet Lord" somehow became a pop staple (despite frivolous litigation) and the loping sing-along of "What is Life" all stand up to anything he did before or since.
By: Andy Gensler
Source: Billboard
