Beatles News
John Lennon was just 40-years-old when he was murdered outside the Dakota in New York City.
The Beatles' singer-songwriter was shot twice in the back and twice in the shoulder by Mark David Chapman as he returned to the building with Yoko Ono following a recording session. John was rushed to hospital, but was sadly pronounced dead on arrival.
In the months that followed his death, Beatles expert David Stark met with John's aunt, Mimi Smith. John lived with his aunt for most of his childhood and the pair remained close throughout his life, with John even calling Mimi every week until his death.
Recalling his meeting with Mimi, Stark exclusively told The Mirror US, "I really got on with her." He explained how they'd been introduced by a mutual friend who was visiting Mimi at the time. Stark said, "This American girl said, 'Come down and meet Mimi and maybe try and cheer her up', because that was in the summer of '81 and John being killed in December 1980s."
The Beatles expert explained how he had never met Mimi before traveling to meet her for a weekend in 1981. "I didn't stay with her, but I was in the bungalow over the weekend and just chatting," he explained.
Stark continued, "I just think it was like therapy for her just to talk really. And she kind of came out of herself a bit."
Source: themirror.com/Scarlett O'Toole
At times while in The Beatles, George Harrison had to fight to make his voice heard. With John Lennon and Paul McCartney assuming creative control of the band as their primary songwriters, George's writing did not always take centre stage.
The Wavertree-born star had written some songs that The Beatles recorded on their early records - he was given a quota of compositions for each album. When the band retired from touring in 1966 and focused on recording innovative music in the studio, George grew frustrated with the supporting role he had to play on 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' and 'The White Album'.
This came to a head in January 1969, as The Beatles began work on what would become their final album 'Let it Be'. George walked out of the band temporarily, fed up with the mood and the way he was being treated. The bad mood that marked the recording of 'Let it Be' had its roots in the 1968 sessions for 'The White Album', which had been notoriously tempestuous. Ringo Starr departed the band for a period during the recording of 'Back in the USSR' and it seems George was also affected by that time.
The sessions for 'The White Album' came after The Beatles' retreat in India. George had led the band's interest in the culture of India and meditation. However the trip to Asia did not end well - the band had a fall out with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who they had studied under. Ringo and Paul left early anyway, heading back to England to focus on their new business interests at Apple Corps.
John and George then left after hearing accusations about the Maharishi relating to a female member of the party. George stayed in India rather than going home with John, instead he went to meet his mentor in Chennai.
Source: liverpoolecho.co.uk/Dan Haygarth
If you are a man, you know what it’s like to have a conversation at a set of urinals. It’s awkward, weird, and most men seemingly try to avoid it, as the mutual understanding is that you don’t talk to another person when you’re using the restroom. However, that rule has to be broken every so often, and Steven Tyler broke it when he met Paul McCartney for the very first time.
Everybody knows Steven Tyler as a free-spirited musician who is no stranger to ambitious and intense rock and roll antics. As we all know, he is quite the animated character. That being said, it isn’t all that surprising to learn that Steven Tyler first met Paul McCartney during a stop in the restroom at a urinal. Frankly, it is arguably the perfect setting for this type of interaction. It’s memorable, comical, and just downright hilarious. Regardless, here is how Steven Tyler first met Paul McCartney at a urinal.
While at the Hammersmith Odeon theater in London, Steven Tyler needed to do what everybody needs to do: Use the restroom. However, what was seemingly intended to be a routine visit turned into a once-in-a-lifetime interaction. And Steve Tyler recollected the one-of-a-kind moment in an exclusive interview with Blabbermouth in 2007.
“My first meeting with Paul McCartney was certainly memorable,” Steven Tyler told the publication. “I was in a backstage urinal at the Hammersmith Odeon. McCartney walked in, started doing what people do in urinals. For the record, I did not check his size out.”
Source: americansongwriter.com/Peter Burditt
Fans of the legendary musician Sir Paul McCartney are still hoping his "sequel" to a Beatles album will be released.
Though there is no indication his follow-up to one of the Fab Four's biggest records will receive an official release, fans remain hopeful of having it out there for people to listen to.
Return to Pepperland was the name given to an unfinished recording project by McCartney and American record producer Phil Ramone. It was produced as a tribute to the 20th anniversary of the 1967 Beatles album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
A post to the r/PaulMcCartney Reddit page has seen fans share their reasons for the album not yet releasing, as some suggest it may never be published. Those who have heard the album on a bootleg tape, however, say it is one of McCartney's best.
One user who has heard the release called it a "great album" with a "fantastic" title track that is in need of an official release.
The album itself is one of McCartney's most bootlegged albums, meaning dedicated fans have pieced together official recording tapes to assemble what could have been the tracklist to his unreleased follow-up to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
While you can listen to Return to Pepperland, McCartney's proposed follow-up to the psychedelic classic which defined The Beatles' image in the mid-1960s, fans are holding out hope for an official release.
One fan asked: "Why hasn't Return to Pepperland been released? It’s a great album and the title song is fantastic. Cuts have been released but not the whole album. So why not?"
A multitude of reasons could be given for why the album has not yet released, with recordings taking place through the 1980s. One fan suggested there are "albums worth" of material in McCartney's archive which may never see the light of day.
They wrote: "Basically, I don't think this is really something we fans can answer. He took 50 years to release One Hand Clapping as an album. Why?
Source: express.co.uk/Ewan Gleadow
About 16 months after the process of recording it began, Let It Be trickled into record stores. It arrived in May 1970, 55 years ago this month. By that time, Beatles fans had started to mourn the fact that the four men’s professional relationship had ruptured.
Anniversaries of the release dates of other Fab Four albums are generally a cause for celebration and reflection. With Let It Be, maybe it’s only the reflection part, as we all try to get a handle on this legacy of this star-crossed project.
As had been the case with several Beatles’ projects in the second half of their recording career, Let It Be, or Get Back, as it was also known for a while, belonged to Paul McCartney. The Beatles would create a new album from scratch, film a documentary about that process, and then close the whole thing out with a live performance of the fresh songs.
McCartney saw it as a way of pulling the band back together after The White Album had progressed at times like it was four separate solo albums. He misjudged the growing disenchantment of John Lennon and George Harrison. The dour environment, with blinding lights pouring down on the band in the cold studio, didn’t help tempers much.
Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary, released four years ago, somewhat rebutted the notion that the process was a joyless slog. But that doesn’t change the fact that George Harrison briefly quit the band after a studio dustup with McCartney. Or that Lennon dressed down McCartney for his overbearing behavior when the cameras weren’t looking.
Perhaps the Let It Be album could have come out stronger had The Beatles shown interest in completing it. But they were so happy to be done with it after the rooftop concert that they quickly moved on to the Abbey Road album.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Jim Beviglia
Paul McCartney said John Lennon always thought he was up to no good. Lennon once accused McCartney of sabotaging his songs.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney began to butt heads in the latter half of the 1960s. While they had worked closely together in the early years of The Beatles, their collaborative process grew increasingly fraught. Lennon even went so far as to accuse McCartney of trying to sabotage some of his songs. He shared how he thought McCartney did it.
John Lennon said Paul McCartney subconsciously ruined songs
Lennon saw “Across the Universe” as one of his best songs ever. He didn’t like the band’s recording of it, though. He blamed McCartney for this.
“I think subconsciously sometimes we — I say ‘we,’ though I think Paul did it more than the rest of us; Paul would … sort of subconsciously try and destroy a great song,” Lennon said, per the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview With John Lennon and Yoko Ono by David Sheff, adding, “He tried to subconsciously destroy my songs, meaning that we’d play experimental games with my great pieces like ‘Strawberry Fields’ — which I always felt was badly recorded.”
He believed McCartney spent more time and effort on his own songs and allowed Lennon’s to fall to the wayside.
“Usually we’d spend hours doing little detailed cleaning-ups of Paul’s songs; when it came to mine, especially if it was a great song like ‘Strawberry Fields’ or ‘Across the Universe,’ somehow this atmosphere of looseness and casualness and experimentation would creep in,” he said. “Subconscious sabotage. He’ll deny it, ‘cause he’s got a bland face and he’ll say the sabotage doesn’t exist. But this is the kind of thing I’m talking about, where I was always seeing what was going on.”
He acknowledged that people might view him as paranoid, but he believed he was presenting the “absolute truth.”
Source: cheatsheet.com/Emma McKee
As one half of the most celebrated songwriting duo in pop music history, Paul McCartney is generally cast as the sweet sentimentalist to John Lennon's acerbic, avant-garde iconoclast. This is, of course, a gross oversimplification — McCartney's interest in experimental tape loops resulted in "Tomorrow Never Knows," one of the most out-there tunes in the Beatles' discography — but his reputation as the Beatle who wrote "silly love songs" stuck. To a certain extent, the shoe did fit: After all, the man managed to make a song about a guy who killed people with a hammer sound like something your grandmother might like. With that in mind, the fact that McCartney's favorite childhood snack was sugar sandwiches seems comically on-the-nose.
In an Instagram Q&A with his daughter Mary, Paul talked about his love for "sugar butties" ("butty" is an English slang term for "sandwich.") Although he described them as "seriously decadent and not good for you at all," the fondness in his voice is evident as he remembers them. "It was just like bread and butter, but with sugar on it — ha-hey! — and that was it."
The star's tastes have clearly changed since his childhood in Liverpool. Notably, he became a health-conscious vegetarian, and while appearing in a cameo role, McCartney contributed a lentil soup recipe to the episode of "The Simpsons" where Lisa quits eating meat. But the food you loved as a kid never really leaves you, does it? Sugar sandwiches are a childhood staple on both sides of the pond.
An important bit of context for young McCartney's love of sugar butties: He grew up in Liverpool in the aftermath of World War II, when the United Kingdom was still recovering from the Blitz. (Liverpool in particular was devastated by German bombs, as it was an industrial hub of considerable importance; London was the only city hit harder.) Rationing didn't completely end in the United Kingdom until 1954, when McCartney was 12, and the economic impact of the war lingered even longer. Sugar sandwiches, then, were a tasty and affordable way for a child to enjoy something sweet, whether their family was rationing or just tightening the metaphorical belt. With that said, however, sugar butties were in fact also eaten before the war.
Other countries got in on the action, too. Sugar sandwiches became popular in America during the Great Depression, as with other simple, economical dishes like water pie or Martha Stewart's beloved onion sandwiches. And Australians will occasionally partake, too — although they prefer a variation called fairy bread, which is bread and butter with "hundreds and thousands" (aka nonpareils) sprinkled over the top.
If you have a sweet tooth, why not give it a try? It only takes a sprinkling of sugar to make it delicious. And even if you think it's a lousy idea, what are you going to do? Argue with the guy who wrote "Yesterday"?
Source: thetakeout.com/Joe Hoeffner
The youngest member of the Fab Four went on to say he "never" wanted to be a Beatle again - but that didn't mean he completely hated his time in The Beatles. George Harrison often said 'Beatles George' wasn't his true self.
Music legend George Harrison once confessed that he merely "acted out the part" of "Beatle George," suggesting it was a persona that didn't reflect his true self. As the youngest member of the Fab Four, Harrison was swiftly labeled the "Quiet Beatle" after the band skyrocketed to international fame in the early '60s.
Post-Beatles, though, Harrison frequently discussed the various pressures, uncertainties, and both physiological and psychological burdens of Beatle life. His salvation, his sense of grounding, was found through spirituality and the catharsis of creating new music, much of which he stashed away for future use.
In a candid conversation with David Wigg for a BBC Radio-One program in October 1969, Harrison expressed readiness to leave The Beatles behind. He had sampled this exit about 10 months earlier when he walked out on the stress-riddled Let It Be sessions, only to rejoin, albeit fatigued, some days later. During the discussion, Harrison articulated a detachment from the Beatle identity, viewing it as merely a role to portray. He stated: "All I'm doing, I'm acting out the part of Beatle George and, you know, we're all acting out our own parts. The world is a stage and the people are the players. Shakespeare said that. And he's right."
Probing further, Wigg inquired: "Do you expect another part, later?" To which Harrison answered affirmatively, "Oh, many parts. Yes."
Seeking clarity, Wigg then asked: "Is that why you've come to terms with it?" Harrison answered: "Yes, because you just do whatever you can do. I mean, even if it's being a Beatle for the rest of my life, it's still only a temporary thing. And, I mean really, all we did was get born and live so many years and this is what happened.
Source: themirror.com/Hannah Furnell
The legacy of The Beatles is completely intertwined in the fabric of music today, not only due to their groundbreaking sound, but also due to the way that they redefined what a band was. Although their impact still resonates throughout pop and rock today, it is interesting to consider that their spectacular ascension took place during an entirely different period, one of physical media like CD, cassette, and vinyl, and fostered by radio, not algorithms.
They achieved this during an era when albums were to be listened to in toto from beginning to end, and each release was an event. With more than 600 million records sold globally, they not only topped charts but redefined them. Their studio gambles as artists, from unorthodox song structures to experimental recording methods, pushed music to new frontiers.
Artists today can pursue viral singles and streaming figures, but The Beatles established their legacy in a slower, analog age, one where cultural longevity was more important than a position on a playlist.
Even in the era of today's rapid-fire, digital-first music culture, The Beatles remain an imposing force, always attracting fresh waves of listeners via streaming sites. Their record, decades since its initial release, still commands eye-popping figures, with most songs in the hundreds of millions, some pushing past the billion-stream threshold.
Far from declining into nostalgia, their music flourishes on playlists, algorithms, and social media trends, demonstrating that their creativity and songwriting are as relevant today as they were in the 1960s. The durability of their influence in an age of short-form content and constantly changing musical trends is a testament to the timelessness of their work and its universality.
Source: soapcentral.com/Anisa Nandy
The Beatles always seemed to be hurtling forward with relentless momentum during their recording years. Despite their breathless pace, they still managed to keep things under control when it came to the music that they made.
In that way, “I’ve Just Seen A Face”, found on the group’s 1965 album Help!, stands as a pretty good approximation of their career. Even as the song flies by at sizzling speed, it stays on the rails and delivers its poignant message.
“Face” Dances
Folks often mention Rubber Soul and Revolver as the LPs where The Beatles started to make complete artistic album-length statements. Help!, the record released directly preceding those two, doesn’t get that same kind of recognition. Some of the tracks lack the ambition that would soon become the hallmark of just about every Fab Four song.
But one factor that stood out on Help! was the group’s willingness to go outside their comfort zone when it came to song styles. There was gentle folk (“You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away”) and heavy pop (“Ticket To Ride”). String quartets (“Yesterday”) hung out next to screaming rock (“I’m Down”).
“I’ve Just Seen A Face” played into that adventurous spirit. It’s a bit odd because there’s no bass on the song, which pretty much prevents it from being characterized as rock. Instead, The Beatles attack the song with a three-pronged acoustic guitar approach. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison are all strumming.
Paul McCartney did the bulk of the writing on the song. He explained in the book Many Years From Now how “I’ve Just Seen A Face” impressed him by acting as something of an unstoppable force:
“It was slightly country and western from my point of view. It was faster, though, it was a strange uptempo thing. I was quite pleased with it. The lyric works: it keeps dragging you forward, it keeps pulling you to the next line, there’s an insistent quality to it that I liked.”
Exploring the Lyrics of “I’ve Just Seen A Face”
McCartney is right on the money with the quote above. Just because he comes to the end of a musical line, that doesn’t mean he has ended his thought. Take, for example, the opening lines: “I’ve just seen a face I can’t forget / The time or place where we just met.” He could have stopped at “forget.” But he surprises us by making that the focus of the next idea.
In that way, the structure of the song mimics the whirlwind romance at the heart of the song. The narrator can’t help but thank his good fortune. “Had it been another day,” McCartney sings. “I might have looked the other way / And I’d have never been aware / But as it is, I’ll dream of her tonight.”
Source: americansongwriter.com/Jim Beviglia
