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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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
The Beatles reportedly plan 50th anniversary 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' release 03 April, 2017 - 0 Comments
The Beatles are reportedly readying a 50th anniversary release of their landmark album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
While no official announcement has been made, the band's websitefeatures four color bars matching the "Sgt. Pepper" uniforms worn by the Fab Four on the cover of that album, which was released on June 1, 1967.
Britain's The Times, citing sources at The Beatles' Apple Records, said the re-release will include "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" as bonus tracks. The songs were recorded during the same sessions as the songs on the "Sgt. Pepper" album, but were released four months earlier as a double A-sided single.
Decades later, producer George Martin said it was a mistake to have not included those two songs on the album.
Keith Allison, former bassist for Paul Revere & the Raiders bassist, noted on Facebook that he heard an advance copy of the remastered "Sgt. Pepper" album while visiting Beatle Ringo Starr a few month ago
By: Ray Kelly
Source: Mass Live
Paul McCartney Recalls Playing Drums at Early Beatles Gigs—and That Time They Backed a Stripper 01 April, 2017 - 0 Comments
Paul McCartney took the term “solo album” to the next level on his first release following the dissolution of the Beatles in 1970. The multi-talented musician played every instrument on the appropriately titled McCartney, drawing on skills he’d honed through years serving as the group’s utility man — mastering guitar, bass, piano, and even drums. (That’s him, not Ringo Starr, behind the kit on "Back In The USSR,” “Dear Prudence” and "The Ballad of John and Yoko.”)
The one-man-band approach was temporarily retired after he formed Wings in 1971, but McCartney continued to play a variety of instruments throughout his career. On 1989’s Flowers In The Dirt, which just received a deluxe reissue treatment as part of the McCartney Archive Collection, he can be heard laying down the beat on the funky “Rough Ride.”
“I have a kit which is based on Ringo’s. I figure I can’t go far wrong with a kit like his,” McCartney, 74, tells PEOPLE. “So it’s lovely, I love it. I always like a chance to get on the kit. I’ve done it since the early days of the Beatles.”
It was a talent developed out of equal parts curiosity and necessity in the early 1960s, when the nascent band were playing a club residency in the seedy red light district of Hamburg, Germany. “There’d be these kits lying around from the other bands. I’d occasionally get down and practice on ‘em and see if I could figure ‘em out. But one of the nights, one of the guys we used to work with, Tony Sheridan, his drummer hadn’t turned up. So I drummed with him. It was terrifying, but it gave me a love of drumming.”
By: Jordan Runtagh
Source: People
It was a night that changed music history: Dec. 8, 1980.
Beatles alum John Lennon, who taught us all to "Imagine" had just returned home with his wife Yoko Ono when he was assassinated outside the Dakota Building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Now, WTOP is learning exclusive insights on that fateful night from singer/songwriter Willie Nile, who performs at Hamilton Live on April 8 and was at the recording studio with Lennon that night.
