Beatles News

Candid images of Sir Paul McCartney and his late wife Linda may never have seen the light of day if photographer Clive Arrowsmith had not cleared out his attic.

The playful shots were found in the loft of the celebrated fashion and celebrity snapper, taken in impromptu sessions at the end of two official photoshoots in 1976 and 1993 - the first of which featured McCartney's band Wings, which he formed with Linda.

Arrowsmith revealed that Paul asked the stylist to get some 'fun costumes' for a spontaneous shoot, and judging from the results the party enjoyed their dressing up session, with Linda even donning a fake beard.

In one of the more recent portraits, the strong bond between the couple is evident as they pose cheek to cheek. Paul pouts lovingly at his wife as they clasp hands, their wedding bands clearly visible. Similarly a colour shot from the same day shows Linda leaning companionably on Paul's shoulder.

Another more playful pose from 17 years earlier sees the pair in jaunty costumes. Linda looks edgy in a top hat while Paul salutes the camera wearing a beret and clasping a cane to his chest. 

The Beatle's famous Liverpudlian sense of humour is again apparent in a photograph details

It was around this time half a century ago that people began to suspect the Beatles of being the creation of supernatural forces. Had they signed a pact with Lucifer? The “more popular than Jesus” frenzy that led to the burning of their records in crazy America demonstrated that, yes, they were unthinkably, absurdly big. The “Paul McCartney is dead” madness caught fire for the same reason. Nothing less than mysterious death or divinity could explain the phenomenon; the resulting paranoia of disbelief had reached the “who really wrote Shakespeare?” level. All this cosmic commotion and they had yet to astonish the world with albums like Revolver and Sgt. Pepper and singles like “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Penny Lane,” “I am the Walrus,” and “Hey Jude.”

“Tomorrow Never Knows”

Fifty years ago today, April 6, 1966, when the Beatles began recording Revolver in EMI’s Studio Three at Abbey Road, a tall, elegantly handsome gentleman with no evident resemblance to Mephistopheles, and no pact signed in blood in his pocket, guided John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr to the top of Mt. Revolver. Th details

They became the most famous group in pop music history.

But were you aware that John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison – minus Ringo Starr – once toured the north east of Scotland as a backing group and were called The Silver Beetles?

Or that, during their visit, McCartney was known as Paul Ramon and Lennon had the words Long John appended to his name?

This was long before the days of the Fab Four, George Martin, and Sergeant Pepper.

Instead, in the spring of 1960, the three youngsters backed singer Johnny Gentle on a series of gigs in Inverness, Fraserburgh, Keith, Forres, Nairn and Peterhead. The gigs were staged at such venues as the Northern Meeting Ballroom in Inverness, Dalrymple Hall in Fraserburgh and The Rescue Hall in Peterhead, between May 20 and May 28.Some of the concerts were well-attended, others attracted barely any audience at all. And Lennon and McCartney returned home to Liverpool after losing money on the trip.

Author Richard Houghton, who has been working on a book about The Beatles in Scotland, admits it was a strange start to the group’s career. But he is keen to hear from anybody in the region who might have attended these 1960 gigs.

George Harrison’s exotic soundtrack to Joe Massot’s swinging 60s cinematic head trip Wonderwall was the first solo Beatle project (that is if you don’t count Paul McCartney’s 1966 soundtrack to The Family Way, which was credited to The George Martin Orchestra). 1968’s Wonderwall Music is all over the musical map—delightfully so—with songs ranging from classical Indian ragas to jaunty nostalgic-sounding numbers to proto-metal guitar freakouts. It’s a minor classic, I wish more people knew about it. I’ve long been an enthusiastic evangelist for this album, sticking tracks on mixed CDs and tapes for quite some time. Even avowed Beatlemaniacs tend to have missed out on Wonderwall Music. It’s a real overlooked gem.

Harrison’s principle collaborator for the Wonderwall soundtrack was orchestral arranger John Barham who transcribed Harrison’s “western” melodies into a musical annotation that the Indian musicians in Bombay could work with. Barham was a student—and collaborator—of Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar who had introduced him to the quiet Beatle. Barham—who would soon go on to compose the soundtrack to Alejandro Jodorowsky& details

During production on Disney's 1967 animated adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, filmmakers came up with a rather ingenious cameo suited to the world's biggest band; the one, and only, The Beatles.

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr would voice a quartet of vultures fitted with mop top hairstyles, crooning the charming number, "That's What Friends Are For". Except, those plans appear not to have come to fruition; due either to clashing schedules or, as rumours have it, Lennon's own refusal to partake in the gag.

Supposedly, Lennon vetoed the appearance and retorted to band manager Brian Epstein that he should tell Disney they'd be better off hiring Elvis Presley instead. The final film instead features the vultures in mock-Liverpudlian accents, voiced by J. Pat O'Malley, Digby Wolfe, Lord Tim Hudson, and Chat Stuart; with the more Beatles-influenced number reshaped into a timeless barbershop quartet.

Now, it looks as if Jon Favreau attempted to reclaim such a missed opportunity; and was once more met with a closed door. The director of the newest version of The Jungle Book claims he tried to get McCartney and Starr to cameo as the vultures, but wasn't able to secure details

The fifth instalment of Pirates of the Caribbean has made a major casting addition with Sir Paul McCartney joining the company of Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, and Geoffrey Rush.

According to Deadline, the legendary 73-year-old, a former member of the The Beatles, has signed on to play an unnamed character in a major extra scene being added to Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.

The production of this extra scene, which features McCartney, began in Vancouver on March 24 and is scheduled to continue until April 13. There have already been public sightings of both McCartney and Depp, who was seen with his wife Amber Heard dining at Tojo’s Restaurant on Thursday night.

Although McCartney’s music has appeared in many films and television shows over the decades, this will be his biggest role yet in cinema.

But this is not the first time that the film’s producers tapped the talent of an English musician for a major acting role. In the third and fourth instalments, released in 2007 and 2011, Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones played Captain Edward Teague – the father of Depp’s character, Captain Jack Sparrow.

McCartney’s role in the filming is ex details

Nearly three months after David Bowie died from cancer on January 10, an impressive roster of musicians put on two tribute concerts at New York’s Carneige Hall Thursday and Friday nights. Although the first show had been planned since October, interest spiked after Bowie’s unexpected passing and a second date was added. As Time reported, many of the performers took time to share their reflections on Bowie as a musical influence and personal friend.

Among those was Sean Lennon, whose father John Lennon was an idol of Bowie’s. The men were friends and had a working relationship in the 1970s. As Sean recalled, Bowie was an early personal and musical influence. The multi-faceted performer took time to give him reading material when he was a youngster.

“[T]he real relationship I had with him was personal, because he was my parents’ friend. When I moved to Switzerland for boarding school, he would pick me up from school and take me to museums and tell me about Kokoschka and painters and books. He gave me the ‘Foundation’ trilogy by Isaac Asimov when I was a kid.”

“I’m really sad about him passing, as one would be about an uncle or something, but then details

A rare signed Beatles' first pressing of their Please Please Me album given to a Grantham area woman 53 years ago could land her a £25,000 windfall when it goes under the hammer this week. The mystery woman vendor - who insists on staying anonymous - was a teenage fan of the fab four when the album was released in March 1963. And she actually got hold of it because a friend's father was the manager of the London hotel where the world's biggest pop band were staying at the time. Now Lincolnshire auctioneers Golding, Young and Mawer are preparing for internet bids between £18,000 and £25,000 for the record and its signed sleeve. 

They have had "significant interest" already for the album and a card also signed by the group - a separate lot expected to go far between £600 and £800 - at their Grantham Auction Rooms. 

The sale is taking place this Wednesday, April 6 from 10am at the Old Wharf Road action venue in the town. Please Please Me was the first album produced by The Beatles and was released on March 22, 1963. Four different pressings were produced with label variations. "Lot 16 is an album from the first pressing and label variation.It is of critical importance to any details

"Just about everyone is tired of the Beatles."

So read the first line of a story on page 1 of the Billboard magazine dated April 4, 1964. That was the week that the Beatles made history as the only act ever to simultaneously occupy the Billboard Hot 100 chart's entire top five positions.

So … why was Billboard printing such seeming blasphemy?

"Disk jockeys are tired of playing the hit group," the story continued. (Cleverly headlined "Chart Crawls With Beatles," the item was written by Jack Maher and Tom Noonan, the latter of whom launched the Hot 100 in 1958.) "The writers of trade and consumer publication articles are tired of writing about them and the manufacturers of product other than the Beatles are tired of hearing about them."

Billboard, of course, noted one key exception. "Everyone's tired of the Beatles – except the listening and buying public."

With a 27-1 second-week blast to the top for "Can't Buy Me Love," the Fab Four locked up the Hot 100's entire top five:

No. 1, "Can't Buy Me Love" No. 2, "Twist and Shout" No. 3, "She Loves You" No. 4, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" No. 5, "Please Please Me"

By: Gary Trust

Source: Billboard

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When an artist wins a Grammy Award, the Recording Academy insists that a form be signed with the artist agreeing that they will not sell the Grammy. Failure to live up to the agreement allows the Academy to, in effect, repossess the award.

That’s why they have taken action, suing Gotta Have It! Collectibles in New York, for putting John Lennon’s Grammy from 1966 for writing Michelle on the auction block. Gotta Have It! currently has a starting bid of $40,000 on the award but no bids have been placed.

The Academy is accusing Gotta Have It! and an unnamed owner of the award with “fraud, false advertising, unfair competition and tortious interference with contractual relations.”

Here’s the strange thing about the action. According to Gotta Have It!, this same award was sold twelve years ago by Christie’s Auction House for $35,850 yet the Recording Academy did not try and block that sale.

Source: Music News

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