Beatles News
In honor of Billboard magazine's 120th anniversary on Nov. 1, we're revealing the top 20 Billboard Hot 100 hits from each decade since the 1960s (for a total of 120 songs).
The '60s was the first full decade of rock and roll, and the top twenty singles of the decade reflect a battle between old and new forms. Elvis Presley and Ray Charles, who helped lay the foundation for the explosion of rock and soul in the '50s, each appear on the list; so does the smooth doo-wop of the Four Seasons. Louis Armstrong, the famous jazz musician who had been recording since the 1920s, had one of the biggest hit singles of the '60s.
But the new era arrived quickly. The biggest hit from the decade? Chubby Checker's rock-indebted dance track "The Twist," the only song ever to hit No. 1 in two separate runs (in 1960 and again in 1962, due to its revival in its pop culture). Sounds were changing. The Beatles landed two entries on the top twenty -- an early number, "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," and the expansive "Hey Jude," from later in their career. Soul came on strong at the end of the decade: Otis Redding's "(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay," from 1967, and Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," from 1968.
Check out the Spotify playlist of the top 20 below -- except for the Beatles, whose music isn't on Spotify -- and read on to see when each hit peaked.
LAKEPORT >> The British are coming, the British are coming!
Actually, they already came, sang and conquered.
The British music invasion of the United States that started in 1964 reached the shores of Clear Lake Sunday with a light-hearted yet powerful performance between what many consider the two greatest rock bands of all time.
A battle of the bands live concert between the Beatles and Rolling Stones never happened in real life, but Sunday night at the Soper Reese Theatre in Lakeport, life became surreal.
The theater stage transformed into a time machine as concert-goers were transported back to he psychedelic 1960s of Liverpool and London for an epic live concert battle between Beatles tribute band Abbey Road and Rolling Stones impersonators Jumping Jack Flash.
The concert featured Abbey Road and Jumping Jack Flash each performing three alternating sets. Abbey Road opened with eight Beatles songs from 1963 to 1966, starting with the rocking "She Loves You" and closing with the primal screaming of "Twist and Shout." Set two showcased Jumping Jack Flash doing six Rolling Stones classic hits from 1963 to 1968, including "Let's Spend the Night Together" and the flower-power generation anthem "Ruby Tuesday."
Award-winning glass artist Alexander Beleschenko took inspiration from the years he spent
Award-winning glass artist Alexander Beleschenko took inspiration from the years he spent listening to his favourite Liverpool band to design the stunning artwork, saying the light reflections mimic the intonations of music.
The internationally acclaimed artist is gracing Liverpool for the first time with his stain glass window-style decorations, which will adorn the new hospital’s West Derby Street and Prescot Street entrances.
Washington — We’re told that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but what planets do Democratic and Republican supporters in the midterm elections come from?
Culturally speaking, they sometimes hail from completely different worlds, Facebook revealed in a set of charts on Tuesday. Democrats, for instance, groove to the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, and Alicia Keys. Republicans vastly prefer the country scene: Miranda Lambert and her husband, Blake Shelton, as well as the ever popular “king of country,” George Strait.
Recent Beatles Radio Poll
News reports say they can tell how you lean politically by what music you listen to. How Do You Lean Politically?
Left - 42.0%
Middle - 31.9%
Right - 26.0%
A letter written by John Lennon to the radio and television host Joe Franklin to endorse Yoko Ono's music sold for $28,171, flying past its presale estimate of $15,000-20,000. It went under the hammer at the Marvels of Modern Music sale hosted last Thursday by RR Auction in Massachusetts, Art Daily reports. The two-page handwritten letter is dated December 13, 1971. In it, Lennon makes a passionate case for his wife's musical talents, writing: "I know you're a musician at heart! And especially I know you dig jazz. Well, Yoko's music ain't quite jazz but to help you get off on it, or understand it, please listen to a track on the Yoko/Ono/Plastic Ono Band, called 'AOS,' which was recorded in 1968 (pre Lennon/Beatles!) with Ornette Coleman at Albert Hall London, you could call it free form, anyway Yoko sits in the middle of avant-garde, classic, jazz—and now through me and my music—rock 'n' roll!"
A PAIR of John Lennon’s iconic glasses, which he lent to a flirty girl who had pinched his bottom during a conga, will go on sale for £25,000. Wendy Baker sat with the late Beatle in a Soho, London, club in 1966. He joked that the bottom pinch had been “lovely” and asked for another. Wendy, now 75, used his “granny” specs to read the menu – and he left without them. Bournemouth-born Wendy said: “It’s hard to imagine someone as cool as John doing the conga, but it happened.”
For the last 30 years, the Flaming Lips have been one of the predominant torch-carriers to the psychedelic music movement of the ’60s. So it’s fitting that they’d try to tackle the Beatles psychedelic classic “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in its entirety. The band recorded over the last year with a host of different artists like Miley Cyrus, My Morning Jacket, Tegan & Sara, Tool‘s Maynard James Keenan and many more. They’re calling the resulting effort “With a Little Help From My Fwends,” a track-by-track recreation of the 1967 record, with a Flaming Lips twist at just about every turn. The band has done this before. In 2009, they released a cover version of Pink Floyd‘s“Dark Side of the Moon” and this time last year, a recreation of Brit-pop band theStone Roses self-titled 1989 debut. This of course isn’t their only means of making music these days; in 2013, the band released their 13th studio album of original material called “The Terror.” Earlier this week, Speakeasy talked with the Flaming Lips’s frontman, Wayne Coyne, while he was cruising around his hometown of Oklahoma City,
Researchers who discovered a new species of tarantula in Western Amazonia, Brazil, named it after one of their musical heroes: John Lennon. Fernando Pérez-Miles
of the University of the Republic, Uruguay, and Alexandre Bragio Bonaldo and Laura Tavares Miglio, both of Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi in Brazil, named the new tarantula species Bumba lennoni. The proposed genus name, Bumba, is taken from Brazilian theatrical folk tradition of the popular festival called Boi-bumbá ("hit my bull"), which is celebrated annually in north and northeastern Brazil. As for the species name, the researchers explain their choice in a study published in the journal Zookeys: “The specific name is patronymic in honor of John Winston Lennon (1940–1980), the legendary creator of The Beatles, who contributed to make this world a gentler place.”
BAY CITY – For Brad Wilderman, it's not just coffee and specialty drinks he and his wife, Peggy, sell from their shop in downtown Bay City.
Their business stands as a virtual time machine, offering patrons transportation to the mid-1960s, when four lads from Liverpool were in the midst of changing the course of history.
"We touch people's lives every day," said Wilderman, sitting inside Espresso Express Presents Beatles and Beans Coffee Emporium. "They come in here and they think they're back in 1964. All they did was walk through that portal there and I transported them back to 1964. They all have memories, too. I've had people start crying in here, just from Beatles memories."
Nearly every inch of wall space is covered with Beatles memorabilia, affixed by about 500 miles of fishing line and 10,000 binder clips. The ceiling has roughly 5,000 vinyl 45s covering it. From the shop's speakers, music from the Beatles or their solo material plays exclusively.
"A lot of this stuff is authentic vintage memorabilia, a lot of it is reproduction stuff, and a lot of it is stuff I've personally made," Wilderman said.
Kevin Roach says many don’t know the true story of Julia Lennon, and he hopes his new interactive book will set the record straight
Most Beatles fans know stories about John Lennon’s mother Julia, whose early death in 1958 scarred him for life and inspired his music.
On his 1970 song Mother, he sang “You had me but I never had you”.
But Kevin Roach says many don’t know the true story – and he hopes his new interactive book, Julia, will set the record straight.
Walton-born Kevin, who has already written about George Harrison and Paul McCartney, wanted to tell the hidden story of John’s roots rather than repeating stories of John’s fame.
He says that the idea of Julia as an irresponsible “good-time girl” who couldn’t look after her son came from Aunt Mimi, who raised John in her house in Menlove Avenue.
But over time a more nuanced portrait of Julia has emerged, helped by John’s half-sister Julia Baird publishing her story in Imagine This in 2007.
