Beatles News

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

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Willie Nile shares new details on the night John Lennon was killed 01 April, 2017 - 0 Comments

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.

“Sunday night, the 7th of December, we’re in the studio recording and the phone rings at midnight,” Nile said. “It’s one of John’s engineers saying, ‘John is out of guitar strings. Do you have any guitar strings he could use?’ We just looked: ‘John Lennon needs guitar strings?!?’ So we go diving into our bags and pull out guitar strings. I was gonna put a note with the strings: ‘To John, thanks for the music. Love ya,’ but I decided that’s too corny. I’m gonna meet him in a few days. I’ll tell him when I see him.”

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Hello, goodbye note from Sir Paul McCartney cheers Beatles fan on retirement 30 March, 2017 - 0 Comments

A popular school caretaker and lifelong Beatles fan has described his amazement after receiving a signed letter from Sir Paul McCartney to wish him well in his retirement. Janitor Andy Cairns was presented with the note at a surprise special assembly on his last day at the Edinburgh school where he has worked for the last four years. Sir Paul sent the note - in which he urges the caretaker to "keep rockin'" - after all of the children at the city's St Cuthbert's RC Primary School wrote to the star. Speaking after the presentation, Mr Cairns, who turned 65 this week, told Press Association Scotland: "I'm a big Beatles fan. The kids had sent letters to his office and he responded, which was amazing. "I'm just overwhelmed. I thought I was in a dream at first. Words can't describe it, I'm such a fan, it's just amazing." Mr Cairns is retiring after 50 years of work, primarily as a mechanic and more recently as janitor at the school.

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Beatles' Iconic 'Sgt. Pepper' Art: 10 Things You Didn't Know 30 March, 2017 - 0 Comments

It's one thing for an album to come along and press itself so deeply into the culture that little feels the same after its arrival, but what are the chances that that same album would have the most iconic LP artwork of all time? So it goes with the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and its wonderful swirl of visuals, ranging from that most distinguished assembly of personalities on its front cover courtesy of Pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth, to some sleeve work by the Dutch design team the Fool, to Michael Cooper's photographs, to the grab-bag of cut-out treasures that accompanied the album. Art dealer Robert Fraser helmed the proceedings as art director, with the most legendary cover-art shoot in rock history transpiring 50th years ago on March 30th. The cover was lavishly pricey to produce, but it solidified the Beatles' mythic status for all time. Here are 10 things you might not know about the iconic look of Sgt. Pepper.

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Paul McCartney Claims Sony Is Devaluing His Beatles Rights 29 March, 2017 - 0 Comments

"You say stop and I say go go go, oh no" — Paul McCartney and John Lennon. On Wednesday, Paul McCartney responded to Sony/ATV's suggestion that he brought an "unripe" lawsuit seeking confirmation he'll reclaim rights to Beatles songs next year. In a letter to the judge, his lawyer Michael Jacobs writes, "Delay would not simplify the parties' dispute, but it would prejudice McCartney. As long as Sony/ATV refuses to disavow any right to sue for breach of contract, McCartney has a cloud over the title to his works, which devalues his rights." In reaction to the lawsuit, Sony sent its own letter to the judge in anticipation of a conference that would lay out a forthcoming motion to dismiss.

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Paul McCartney Confirms He's Working On New Album 27 March, 2017 - 0 Comments

Get ready for some new music from Paul McCartney. “I'm making a new album, which is great fun. I'm in the middle of that,” McCartney said during an interview with BBC Radio 6's Matt Everitt on Saturday (March 25). The new set is being produced by Greg Kurstin. “I'm working with a producer who I first worked with two years ago on a thing, a piece of music I'm doing for an animated film,” McCartney said. “And since then he went on to work with Beck and got best album of the year,” he continued. “Then he went on to work with Adele. He just got song of the year, record of the year with Adele. And just got producer of the year. So my only worry is people are going to go, 'Uhhhhh, there's Paul going with the flavor of the month.’ You know, I suppose you always think the worst of it. But he's a great guy. Greg is musical and he's great to work with.”

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A few words about Pete Shotton… 27 March, 2017 - 0 Comments

It wasn’t easy being John Lennon’s friend, and Yoko didn’t make things any easier. “If anyone was doing the hanging on, it was John. He hung on to me, always had done. He always made me feel special, made it clear he was desperate for my company, especially when he was depressed and fed up, which he was for many years. He used to say to me: ’I don’t want to be a Beatle any more, stuck in a bag marked Beatle. I want to open the bag and let the Beatles out. I want to be myself.’” – Pete Shotton (as told to Hunter Davies) As anyone who’s ever tried it will tell you, it’s hard to be a friend. However close or long term a friendship, there are always moments when a friendship is tested by actions or circumstances that make or break the friendship. In many, if not most, cases friendships fail these tests. Those few that survive (one hesitates to use the word pass, as friendships are acts of endurance rather than one-off events like tests) can reach a level of intimacy and trust that provide the persons involved with comfort on the long, hard road of life.

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‘I wrote my best hits in my bedroom’: Paul McCartney says he and John Lennon penned their best Beatles hits while sat ‘opposite each other on twin beds’ 26 March, 2017 - 0 Comments

Sir Paul McCartney has revealed that he and John Lennon wrote their best tracks while sitting ‘opposite each other on twin beds’. The Beatles star recalled moments where the two of them would ‘spin off each other’ as they came up with new melodies. Asked about his experience of writing music, the 74-year-old, who formed the Beatles in 1960 with Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, said: ‘There’s a million ways to write, but the way I always used to write was with John and it would be across from each other, either in a hotel bedroom on the twin beds, with an acoustic guitar and we’re just looking at each other. ‘He’d make up something, I’d make up something and we’d just spin off each other. ‘It’s always my big memory, is seeing John there, him being right-handed, me being left-handed, it felt to me like I was looking in a mirror.’

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The 10 Worst Beatles Songs 26 March, 2017 - 0 Comments

Yes, we know that The Beatles are great. Yes, they are unarguably the most import band in musical history, achieved more in their brief period together as any band have before or since, and released a shed load of songs that are now stitched firmly into our cultural heritage. Yes, John Lennon is one of the UK’s true icons, Paul McCartney is the most beloved and revered songwriter of our time, George Harrison is an underrated genius and Ringo – erm- narrated Thomas the Tank Engine.

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Tributes paid after John Lennon's best friend Pete Shotton passes away 24 March, 2017 - 0 Comments

Tributes have been paid to Pete Shotton, the best friend of John Lennon, who has died aged 75. It is thought he died from a heart attack at his home in Knutsford, Cheshire and funeral arrangements are currently being made. Pete attended Dovedale Primary School and Quarry Bank High School alongside the future Beatle, and he later joined John – as a washboard player – in The Quarrymen. At school the inseparable friends came to be known as “Shennon and Lotton” or “Lotton and Shennon.”

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