Beatles News

In time for Breast Cancer Awareness month in October, British designer Stella McCartney unveiled a bra dubbed the Louise Listening bra.

Except it's not your typical piece of lingerie. McCartney crafted a bra specifically for women who have undergone double mastectomy surgery. McCartney noticed that the options for post-surgery bras mostly had a dull utilitarian look. The light rose, lace-detailed bra is a change from your typical utilitarian post-double mastectomy bra that McCartney noticed.

So McCartney set out to design a bra that women could feel both comfortable and confident in.

McCartney said the Louise Listening bra was created in honor of her mother, Linda, who she lost to breast cancer in 1998.

“We wanted to bring something feminine and beautiful into a bra that is taboo,” McCartney said in a statement. “There are so many different emotions attached to the tragic realities of having had a double mastectomy, many cultures are unaccepting and terrible things happen to women both physically and emotionally. And we just wanted to make something that allows women undergoing this to have something to be proud of, something with no shame attached.”

By: Clarissa - details

Music legend Ringo Starr should be awarded a knighthood, says Labour’s culture spokesman. All the Beatles were appointed MBEs in 1965 and Paul McCartney was made a Sir in 1997 – but not drummer Ringo.

Shadow Culture Secretary Michael Dugher said the Beatles’ drummer had waited far too long and should finally get a top honour. Sir Paul McCartney was tapped on the shoulder by the Queen for his honour in 1997. But Ringo, who is the only other surviving Beatle, just has the MBE he received in 1965 to show for his hugely successful career.

Mr Dugher said: “ The Beatles changed the course of popular music forever and they continue to bring massive benefits to the UK in terms of trade and tourism. “Ringo’s unique drumming was intrinsic to the music of the Beatles - just listen to A Day in the Life or Strawberry Fields Forever - and his charisma and personal charm was an intrinsic part of their act as entertainers.

“Ringo is a legend and has made a massive contribution to our country. It’s been over 50 years since he got his MBE. “At the age of 75, it’s time for Ringo to get a knighthood for services to music. No other country in the world would take so details

In this latest edition of the Underrated Beatles Songs series, the tunes featured appear in both, some of their earliest works as well as their latest.

5. The Inner Light

"The Inner Light" is arguably, one of George Harrison's greatest contributions to The Beatles' discography. It was recorded in early 1968 and released on March 15, 1968 as the B-side to the "Lady Madonna" single.

Harrison declared that a letter he received from a Sanskrit scholar at Cambridge, who had participated in a conversation along with Harrison and John Lennon about the benefits of transcendental meditation, inspired the song. The lyrics, though, are in a way a musical restoration of the 47th chapter of the Tao Te Ching.

In regards to the music and the melody, one does not have to guess too much to figure out its inspiration. It is well known that Harrison was very interested in and involved with Indian music, culture, and way of life. It is because of him that the Beatles were first introduced to and inspired to experiment with Indian music in their work, which was a constant in their latter years. The instrumental piece for this song was recorded in Mumbai, India in January 1968 while Harrison was working on his first s details

On October 9, 1968, Paul McCartney asked engineer Ken Townshend to join him in Studio One at Abbey Road. The singer had an idea for a simple, bluesy track, and wanted to get the vocals and basic backing track (minus the drums) laid down. Thus “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road,” one of the White Album’s raunchiest and shortest tracks, was born, along with some subsequent controversy.

During the late stages of the Beatles White Album sessions, McCartney improvised the rocker, and elected to enter the studio by himself to record the track. He laid down five takes, which began with acoustic guitar and McCartney’s vocals. Originally he sang in a subdued style, gradually escalating to the screaming technique present on the final version. By take five, he decided to stick with the raucous vocalization throughout the track. This early version, which features McCartney thumping his guitar to create a beat, later surfaced on the Anthology 3 compilation. Once take five was completed, Paul McCartney overdubbed the piano section.

The next day, McCartney and Townshend resumed work on the track while John Lennon and George Harrison were overseeing the string overdubs for “Glass Onion” an details

The contract between The Beatles and their manager Brian Epstein is set to fetch up to £500,000 at a London auction this month. The document, signed by all four members of the band, is the only managerial contract signed by both the final line-up of the Beatles - and their manager. Signed in October 1962, the contract was finalised just days before the release of the band's first single, Love Me Do.

The contract is between Brian Epstein and The Beatles, signed by John Winston Lennon, George Harrison, James Paul McCartney, and Richard Starkey (Ringo Starr). As Paul and George were under 21, their fathers, Harold Hargreaves Harrison and James McCartney, were also summoned to co-sign the contract. 

The contract states that The Beatles agree to 'appoint the Manager to act as such Manager throughout the world ... for a period of 5 years from the 1st day of October 1962', signed by Brian Epstein as company Director and Clive Epstein as company Secretary, then signed by all other parties including all four Beatles. 'Without this contract, and the relationship it represents, it seems inconceivable that The Beatles could have achieved all that they did,' Sotheby's writes on its website. 'It took more than insp details

They were two young working-class kids growing up together in Liverpool, Richie Starkey and Priscilla White. Then he was a drummer in bands and she was the cloakroom girl who got up to sing at the Cavern Club. Then suddenly he was Ringo Starr of the world-conquering Beatles and she was Cilla Black, chart-topping singer and TV personality.

Now Ringo, 75, who knew Cilla long before his bandmates John, Paul or George had ever met her, has spoken for the first time about the death of his old childhood friend. “I was in LA when I found out she died, and actually found out via a news outlet rather than someone ringing me up to tell me,” he says.

She was three years younger than Ringo and he was shocked that she went so suddenly following a fall at her home in Spain on August 1. They had always kept in touch and over the years went on lots of holidays together, particularly when they both had young children.

“Cilla started at the same time we did,” Ringo recalls. “She was important in Liverpool and so were we – and then we had to fight the rest of the world together!

“I remember her before she ever made it – she lived in a tenement. Her mother was a friend details

At 26, Paul McCartney should have been on top of the world. He was single, rich beyond most people’s dreams and a member of the most successful pop band of them all.

Back home at the Beatle’s home in St John’s Wood, London, though, it was a different story. His beautiful green velvet sofa was covered in dog hair and the state of the carpets was indescribable. Unwashed wine glasses, plates and dirty ashtrays littered the living room.

Meanwhile, women fought like cats for a place in Paul’s grubby bed. Indeed, when his friend the writer Barry Miles came round one day, he found several semi-clad girls in residence. It was all too much — yet not enough. 

So Paul reached out to the one woman who had made sense to him in recent months: American photographer Linda Eastman.

But when he called her in New York to invite her to London, she was already committed to photographing the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane in San Francisco — so he had to wait.

As in the past, Linda ended up in bed with one of the musicians — this time Marty Balin, founder of Jefferson Airplane. But this time, at least, she applied the brakes.

Balin recalls: ‘She details

Records from John Lennon’s school days suggest there may be more than a grain of autobiographical truth in Getting Better, the Beatles song that includes the line “I used to get mad at my school, the teachers that taught me weren’t cool”.

Auction house Sotheby’s said on Wednesday it would be offering a lined sheet, torn from a 1950s school notebook, listing the 15-year-old Lennon’s detentions for such transgressions as “impertinence” and “not wearing school cap”.

Sotheby’s said the sheet, listing 29 detentions imposed on Lennon between September 1955 and July 1956 at Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool, was rescued from a bonfire of old school records by an eagle-eyed member of staff in the 1970s.

“The frequent entries on this sheet from six different teachers reveal that John Lennon’s rebellious nature and irreverence were well established traits of his character even at the age of 15,” Sotheby’s said in a news release.

On one day, September 12, 1955, Lennon received five detentions from two teachers for a range of offences from “no hwk” (homework) to “talk after two warnings” and & details

The late Ray Charles—the great American singer, songwriter, musician and composer—was born on this date (September 23) in 1930.

No, this factoid doesn't have a lot to do with guitars.

It does, however, bring to mind John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers' interesting 1966 version of Charles' 1959 hit "What'd I Say." The Bluesbreakers version features a young Eric Clapton on guitar.

To put it bluntly, even though it appears on a groundbreaking, legendary guitar album—Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton—"What'd I Say" is not a standout track by any means. It just sort of sits there, and its lengthy drum solo (played by Hughie Flint) isn't exactly "Moby Dick." Who knows, maybe it was a crowd favorite at the Bluesbreakers' live shows.

Anyway, there is this oddity to consider: When the rest of the band comes back into the song after Flint's drum solo (at 3:36), Clapton is playing the very-hard-to-miss guitar riff from the Beatles' late-1965 single "Day Tripper"—over and over again. Blues Breakers was recorded in March 1966, so there's no question as to whose riff it was.

Is it theft? Plagiarism? Maybe by today's standards. But in reality, it's just a 21-year-old guitarist details

Unpublished negatives of John Lennon with his wife Yoko Ono, taken just two days before he died, are set to go on sale at auction in the US, with prices expected to reach tens of thousands of dollars.

The set of photographs was taken by BBC producer Paul Williams just 48 hours before the former Beatle was gunned down outside his home in New York, and is part of the same lot as a controversial peace of film footage showing John Lennon and the other Beatles on stage in Blackpool.

The photos were taken during John's final interview at the Hit Factory, a legendary Manhattan recording studio. DJ Andy Peebles conducted the interview for the BBC, and the material to emerge became known as the Last Lennon Tapes. Williams shot nine photos of Lennon with Ono, and one solo shot of Ono. 23 of the photos feature Peebles with unidentified people. Bidding for the negatives begins at $14,000 for the lot at Nate D Sanders Auctions.

The very last photos of John Lennon were taken by Annie Leibovitz on the day of his death.

Part of the same collection going under the hammer is 3 ½ minutes of 8 mm footage of the Beatles performing at the ABC Theatre in Blackpool, England along with backstage clips.

By: details