Beatles News

Whisper it quietly but music royalty Sir Paul McCartney may put in an appearance at this year's Concert At The Kings in All Cannings, near Devizes. There have been rumours that McCartney would take to the stage at Rock Against Cancer since it was first held five years ago. But this time co-organiser John 'Grubby' Callis believes it could happen. And as Grubby is McCartney's sound engineer he should know. He said on Friday: "He has the date and he has promised me that he will appear one year. This is our fifth anniversary so why not this year. But I doubt we will know until very near the time."

Last year McCartney did not make it to All Cannings to join the likes of Lindisfarne and Squeeze but Mr Callis revealed he had made a substantial donation to the event which raises money for a number of cancer charities and local good causes.

The first four concerts have raised a total of more than £112,000 and there are high hopes that this year's on May 21 will be even more successful. It has grown hugely since Mr Callis along with Kings Arms landlord Richard Baulu and Andy Scott guitarist with The Sweet came up with the idea.

By: Joanne Moore

Source: Gazette and Herald

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"Thank you, NME, for this great honour. I accept this as your encouragement for me to keep making my 'Sound of Music'." That’s what Yoko Ono – icon, artist, activist and musician – said of the ‘Lifetime Inspiration Award’ she will pick up the NME Awards with Austin, Texas on February 17. The ceremony will be held the at O2 Academy in Brixton and will see Ono, who turns 83 the day after the event, thanked for the massive impact she’s had on pop culture in the last 50 years, from pioneering contemporary art to inspiring John Lennon, whom she married in 1969. Here are eleven times Yoko Ono helped to shape the face of popular culture forever. 

Grapefruit

Ono’s 1964 art-book Grapefruit is full of instructions and aphorisms such as: “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is a reality.” The messages within the book seem simple, but her real talent lies in the clarity required to achieve that simplicity. When you consider the 140-character nature of Twitter (which Ono’s pretty excellent at), you can see how ahead of her time she was. 

‘Bed-In’

In 1969, Ono and Lennon staged two identical protes details

It's not just budding pop stars Adele has inspired with incredible third album 25, even music legends are following her lead. I can reveal that Paul McCartney is working on new material with producer Greg Kurstin, the mastermind behind her now-iconic single Hello. The Beatles star has songs ready for a new album and, having been so impressed by Adele’s comeback, called on Greg to help him hone them.

A music insider revealed: “Paul loved what Greg did with Adele and knows he can add something special to his record. “He is really embracing the pop direction of his last album and wants to continue in that vein with his new stuff.

“It’s a huge coup as Greg is without doubt the most sought-after producer at the moment. “He was going to produce Paul’s full album but is going to work on a couple of tracks first and they will take it from there.” Last year Adele admitted that without Greg, record-breaking album 25 may never have seen the light of day.

Discussing the moment they came up with Hello during a session in 2013, she said: “This song was a massive breakthrough for me with my writing because it had been pretty slow up to this point.

Source: Th details

THE Beatles may never have made it to Clacton but that doesn’t mean they didn’t leave their mark on the resort. Thirty years after A Hard’s Day’s Night was screened at the now long-lost Odeon, in West Avenue, fan and musician Karl Johnson found himself in a time-warp dating back to the Fab Four’s heyday.

“It was a little disused hotel bedroom at the top of either the Criterion on Pier restaurant, facing the sea, and it was covered from top to bottom in Beatles wallpaper,” said Karl. “There had been a rumour that the Beatles were almost booked to appear at the Princes Theatre in 1964 and this wallpaper had been there since then. “Most of it was still intact, stuck on to the crumbling walls of this Victorian room. “I went there with my dad and we stripped it all off because they were refurbishing it. “It seemed to still be in good condition but once it was removed from the walls the brittle paper just crumbled apart. “We had a hell of a job getting it off the wall. Some of it wouldn’t come off and some of it was damp.”

Dad Derek was an antiques dealer. They saved what they could and mounted it onto cards before sending it off for a details

Get ready for the British Invasion at Henry Ford Museum. Beginning April 30, 2016, The Magical History Tour: A Beatles Memorabilia Exhibition will take visitors on an unprecedented journey of the Fab Four’s ground-breaking career that’s not to be missed. The Magical History Tour offers guests the opportunity to retrace the steps of the Beatles and the way in which they changed the music industry and influenced American pop culture with the best private collection ever assembled, that highlights their formatives years in Liverpool and Hamburg, the screaming fans across the world and goes into the studio for the creation of some of the most innovative music in history.

Fans and visitors will experience the exhibition in a fast-forward journey from birth to fame to breakup and beyond. The robust multi-sensory galleries include:

Beginnings, Influence and Life in Liverpool: Guests will be immersed in the atmosphere of late 50s/early 60s Liverpool. Part of the very stage that supported some of the band’s early shows is on display, as well as instruments, personal letters and photographs, and various documents detailing the growing fame of the Fab Four. These artifacts are incredibly rare, as they com details

On 10 June, 1966, The Beatles released their 12th single, Paperback Writer. Relegated to the B-side was Rain, an altogether stranger song that signalled a sea-change in the Beatles music and in their collective consciousness. Written in the wake of John Lennon’s first encounters with LSD, its metaphorical language and richly textured musical backdrop – the basic track recorded, then slowed down, the vocals multi-tracked and set against a droning guitar and pulsing bass – was an evocation of the hallucinogenic experience.

Rain was a signal of what was to come: Revolver. Released on 5 August, 1966, it changed everything, shifting the locus of pop from the single to the album, and announcing a period of intense creative momentum that arguably has not been equalled since.

Alongside the more meanderingly brilliant White Album from 1968, Revolver is The Beatles’ album I return to most. Listening to it 50 years on, there is a freshness to it that is remarkable, but it also speaks about another time, and another pop culture, that was more idealistic, adventurous and altogether less narcissistic than today’s. As Beatles scholar Ian MacDonald notes inhis illuminating close-reading of their so details

The Beatles' rooftop concert was the climax of a project originally titled Get Back. It was conceived as exactly that, a return to their rock roots in a desperate effort to restore unity when business and personal chaos threatened to destroy the band. A documentary crew filmed the Beatles rehearsing and recording new material for an "honest" album, free from the studio wizardry that had dominated their recent work. The experience pushed the group to the point of disintegration, but they needed an end to the film. 

So 47 years ago — on January 30th, 1969 — the band climbed five stories to the top of their Apple Corps headquarters and played their last concert together. The album and film were ultimately released in May 1970 as Let It Be, their swan song. Here are 15 little-known facts about the Beatles' final bow on the world stage. 

The concert was originally going to take place in an ancient amphitheater.

Or on a cruise ship. Or in the desert. The Beatles had many ideas about where to perform the climactic concert for their new film — too many ideas. London venues like the Palladium and the Roundhouse were some of the more levelheaded propositions, but most were pretty far-ou details

Which band member wrote the most of The Fab Four's 310 songs? How many Beatles songs weren't written about love? And how much did Ringo actually contribute to the band?

These questions were once fertile ground for many a furious pub debate, but now, in the glorious information age that we presently inhabit, we simply look to the internet for the definitive answers to these sorts of big questions. And our search for Beatles knowledge has just dramatically shortened - may we present to you: the Beatles analysis graph.

Complied by analytical artist Adam E. McCann for the interactive data visualisation site Tableau, the Beatles Analysis visual is quite something: stocked full of mountains of data about almost everything Paul, John, George and even Ringo ever did, it reels through stats on lyrical vocabulary, song meanings, chart positions, and much, much more. It truly is something that you could lose hours of your life to - so why not go ahead and do just that right now?

By: Sam Moore

Source: NME

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51 years after the Beatles played the Indianapolis State Fair on September 3rd, 1964 and 46 years after the Beatles were photographed crossing Abbey Road in Northwest London, America's self-proclaimed first and only full-time Beatles scholar, Aaron Krerowicz, has returned to live right here in Indiana, our very own Crossroads of America.

Winter Solstice in Indianapolis: I trample rainy streets and brave unseasonably warm temperatures in Broad Ripple to talk with Krerowicz at Yats – and to dine while dishing on the Fab Four. Krerowicz stands 6'4", so I easily spot him in the crowd. He order, we found a table and promptly agree Yats ranks high on the favorite cuisine list. He devoured chili cheese etouffee with extra bread. (Smart man.)

Born and raised in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Krerowicz deftly exited at 18 for the wilds of Indianapolis to attend Butler University for a degree in Music Theory and Composition, then headed east to Massachusetts and Connecticut for graduate degrees in Music Composition.

He decided to use that education and leave all part-time jobs behind to hit the lecture circuit full-time for his passion. He has three self-published books: The Beatles & The Avant-Garde, From the Shad details

The EP by music collective Mercblecket was released in 1964, a full three years before the Fab Four unveiled their creative tour-de-force, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, in 1967. The Mercblecket EP, which ironically features the band performing covers of four Beatles songs and is titled Mercblecket Beats The Beatles, has a cover featuring several of the musicians standing centre-stage in front of a bass drum daubed with the band's name, while wearing military guardsman's jackets. They are flanked on either side and behind by other members of the group.

The Sgt. Pepper cover famously features the Fab Four wearing guardsman's jackets while standing in front of a bass drum daubed with the album's title. On both sides, and behind them, is an array of black and white cutouts of the band's heroes. Although the sleeve was designed by Peter Blake and Jann Haworth, they were working from an ink drawing by MCCartney showing the basic concept for the artwork.

It is believed a member of Mercblecket, Roger Wallis, gave MCCartney a copy of the record when The Beatles visited Sweden in 1964. Record dealer Jorgen Johansson has tracked down a rare copy and is trying to unravel the mystery.

Source: Contact Music details