Beatles News

The Beatles will forever be known as the original boy band, a status they achieved only a few years after forming in Liverpool in 1960, when fangirls started fawning over John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. But before Starr joined the group in 1962, when Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best were still around, the men—or, rather, boys—owed a major part of their success to a woman: Astrid Kirchherr, a German photographer who first stumbled upon them when she heard music coming from a club in her hometown of Hamburg. After flattering them with a request to photograph the group, leading to a trip to a local fairground that would produce their first-ever group photo, she became intimately close to its members: She was, for example, the one to first cut their hair into their iconic mop tops, which were initially favored by the local German boys Kirchherr grew up around.

Source: by Stephanie Eckardt

Read More<<<

Bravo’s “The Fifth Beatle” will examine what it was like to be gay and Jewish in 1960s England through the prism of the life story of legendary Beatles manager Brian Epstein, who died in 1967 at age 32.

Production on the Sonar Entertainment series, based on the graphic novel by Vivek J. Tivary, is still months off and details as to where it will shoot are scant, but Jenna Santoianni, Sonar’s executive VP of television series and a “Fifth Beatle” executive producer, offered a glimpse at plans for the limited series. Sonar developed the property and set it up at Bravo last month.

“I think Vivek has done an amazing job in adapting his graphic novel to the television script,” Santoianni tells Variety. “And from the script, people are going to get the true life story of Brian Epstein and really feel that he was brilliant yet was a bit of a tortured dreamer and get the early look at Brian Epstein’s discovering the band in the Cavern Club in Liverpool and get a sense of how he both nurtured and protected them, and really guided their careers to worldwide success. We’re going to explore that he was a gay Jewish man in 1960s England, which wasn’t a p details

Indian Classical music has its own charm and is like a therapy to some. The ragas and talas in this music drown every music lover into a pool of imagination.

The contribution of many music composers and instrumentalists in the classical music of India is not something to forget.

While some may like Indian Classical music to its core, others may be the fan of Western Music. But two of these fans are often parallel to each other when it comes to choice of their music. But what if they reach a point where they can be the fan of both the kinds of music?

This is possible when two vastly dissimilar artists come together to create something fantastic and over the top.

One such incident is when Sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar and George Harrison of The Beatles met and collaborated with each other.

Source: indiatoday.in

Read More<<<

When Glenn Gass developed his first rock and roll history class at Indiana University in 1982 it wasn’t exactly a hit among his peers.

Pop music didn’t seem to have a history worth preserving, Gass recalled. Pop music was for one generation, he said, and then the next generation had its own version and so on.

As a composition major, Gass knew enough about music and firmly felt The Beatles were a “great gift to the musical world.”

But those were fighting words in the early 80s at the IU School of Music.

It was the first rock album with printed lyrics, the first with a fold-out cover, the first to win a "Best Album" Grammy. It may be the most influential record in pop history, and the best-loved. It changed the direction of The Beatles, and rock-and-roll, forever. It's "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," released 50 years ago June 2nd.

“I had the head of the musicology department ask how I could teach even one minute of musical garbage,” Gass said. “To him rock and roll was just noise. And he wasn’t even trying to be insulting, he was just baffled by how anyone could even listen to that junk.”

Source: Megan Erbacher, Courie details

Something in the way she moved attracted not only Beatles legend George Harrison but also guitar god Eric Clapton.

Pattie Boyd is the muse who inspired the music giants to write among the greatest love songs of the 20th century – Something, Layla and Wonderful Tonight.

The Vogue cover model who wed first the Beatles pin-up, breaking fans' hearts around the world, and then Clapton who immortalised his desire for her with chart-topping Layla while she was still with Harrison.

Boyd is bringing her extraordinary life story to audiences here, with a show in May at the Auckland Museum.

She will share memories, film footage and personal photographs from her incredible time with many of the brightest stars of rock'n'roll.

Source: Lee Umbers lee.umbers@nzherald.co.nz

Read More<<<

When I suggested to my Beatles-obsessed husband that we should go to Liverpool, I won points for the rest of our marriage. What I didn’t realize until later, when I was standing on a certain lane behind the shelter in the middle of the roundabout, was that I would actually enjoy myself. Very strange.

I had wondered if, in making such a pilgrimage, there would be a place for the nonreligious. But when slanted sunbeams fell on Eleanor Rigby’s headstone as if on cue, I shivered a little and smiled.

My husband, Ricky, knows all the answers (at least when it comes to the Beatles), so I let him engage in trivia contests with our tour guide in Liverpool. Freed from the tug of minutiae, I was able to marvel in the phenomenon of the Fab Four: how one band united the world, and continues to do so, 50 years after the release of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

Source: nytimes.com

Read More<<<

You’ve heard news anchors introduce guests with the obligatory “joining us now via satellite,” for decades. That’s only possible because of the vast network of communications satellites currently in orbit around the earth.

The Intelsat-1, nicknamed Early Bird, pioneered this new era of global communication via space when it launched on April 6 1965. It was the first commercial satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit, which means it follows the daily rotation of the earth, albeit on a different inclination.

So, if you were observing the satellite from the ground it would appear to be in the same position. This is necessary to maintain continuous transmission, as the line of sight is never lost. Also due to the higher position in orbit, these satellites can cover and connect more of the earth.

Early Bird took full advantage, becoming the first satellite to enable constant satellite communication between Europe and North America. Phone calls, faxes and television broadcasts were all transmitted by the dinky satellite, which weighed just 34.5kg and measured a mere 76 x 61 cm. It featured just two 6W transponders with 50 MHz bandwidth and was covered with 6,000 solar cells.

Sir Paul McCartney, Samuel L Jackson, Mariah Carey, Katy Perry, Harry Styles and Meryl Streep are just some of the stars who have shared their "dreams" to mark the 50th anniversary of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr's assassination.

They joined the likes of Mary J Blige, Bruce Springsteen, Tiger Woods and Billie Jean King to pledge their visions for the future in a video on Wednesday.

Music legend Stevie Wonder , who masterminded the tribute, urged viewers to share their hopes on Twitter under the hashtag #DreamStillLives in honour of the civil rights icon of non-violence, who was silenced aged 39 by a gunman.

Former US president Mr Obama, joined by his wife Michelle, said: "Our dream is of a world where we recognise each other's common humanity and that we shape for our children, peace, justice and opportunity for all."

Source: Sam Blewett/mirror.co.uk

Read More<<<

The Beatles are one of the greatest cultural phenomena to come from the 20th Century, yet many people are unaware of their impact on science.

In 'Here, There and Everywhere', inspired by the book 'La scienza dei Beatles' ('The science of the Beatles'), Viviana Ambrosi shows how the Fab Four can bring the study of celestial objects and the exploration of the universe closer to a large public audience. This is set out in a presentation on 3rd April at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science in Liverpool. The Beatles formed at the start of the space race, and have always inspired scientists, whether they knew it or not.

The Beatles' record company (EMI) used money from the sale of the White Album to fund scientific research. Some of which went towards Godfrey Hounsfield's research into X-rays, which led to the invention of the CT scanner, for which he shared a Nobel Prize.

Source: spacedaily.com

Read More<<<

“Spring is here and Leeds play Chelsea tomorrow and Ringo and George and John and Paul are alive and well and full of hope. The world is still spinning and so are we and so are you. When the spinning stops – that’ll be the time to worry. Not before.” So ran the press release that announced the end of the Beatles on 11 April 1970, some time after they had actually broken up. It was written by Derek Taylor, a loquacious native of the Wirral who had served as their press officer in 1964, and again from 1968 until the end, when he headed the press department of Apple, their record company and doomed experiment in “western communism” .

Alongside their manager Brian Epstein and producer George Martin, Taylor – who was born in 1932 and died in 1997 – was one of the group’s inner circle whose comparatively advanced years and very English urbanity added to the sense that, however exotic their outward appearance, the Beatles kept one collective foot in a world of tea, biscuits and impeccable manners.

Source: John Harris/theguardian.com

Read More<<< details