Beatles News

This week’s edition of Deep Beatles could be retitled “A Tale of Multiple Mixes.”

Originally intended for the Hard Day’s Night soundtrack, the Beatles’ “I Call Your Name” stands out for its cowbell-led percussion, unusual musical structure, and distinctive guitar solo. While omitted from the album due to its slight similarity to “You Can’t Do That” (chiefly its cowbell), “I Call Your Name” resurfaced on the Beatles’ 1964 UK EP Long Tall Sally and the U.S. Capitol release The Beatles’ Second Album. Today, it can be found on the Past Masters compilation.

John Lennon had been hanging on to “I Call Your Name” since the Beatles’ pre-Hamburg days, according to a 1980 Playboy interview. “That was my song. When there was no Beatles and no group, I just had it around,” he said. “It was my effort as a kind of blues originally, and then I wrote the middle-eight just to stick it in the album when it came out years later. The first part had been written before Hamburg even. It was one of my ‘first’ attempts at a song.” In a 1994 interview, Paul McCartney recalled helping Lennon revise the details

Yoko Ono is a towering figure in the twentieth-century art and music worlds. She was one of the main artists behind the Fluxus movement, and her performance and visual art and sound experiments had made her famous before she ever met her future husband, John Lennon of The Beatles. Lennon was a visual artist as well as a musician; his simple, spare and playful art was as accessible as any of his music and imbued with a similarly unique creative vision. Ono is now exhibiting some of Lennon's visual art at various art galleries around the country, including Fascination Street Fine Art, where special prints are for sale. We recently spoke with Ono about her late husband's artwork, its populist sensibility and the importance of giving.

Westword: You're displaying the art of John Lennon around the country. As someone who was involved in the avant-garde art world early on, including being part of the Fluxus movement, how would you say that John's work fits in with the history of art?

Yoko Ono: One day, a long, long time from now, maybe [it will fit in with the history of art]. Things go very fast, so I don't know when that's going to be. But I think John's work will be very highly rated because not one artist I see in details

Paul McCartney had been on the road for nearly a year when his Flowers in the Dirt tour finally touched down in Liverpool on June 28th, 1990. This was a special night since McCartney had been completely off the road since the final Wings trek in 1979, and this was his first show that centered around Beatles tunes. A humongous crowd showed up at King's Dock to watch the local hero and cameras were rolling for a television special.

The year also marked the 50th anniversary of John Lennon's birth, and McCartney wanted to do something memorable at the show to mark the occasion. "So much gets said about me and John," he said at the time. "And we had barneys [British slang for fights], plenty of barneys. I like the idea of putting that to rest by playing a small tribute to to him." 

He pulled that off by performing a long medley that incorporated "Strawberry Fields Forever," "Help!" and "Give Peace a Chance." It was the first time he'd ever played those songs live, and he picked them since they were quintessential Lennon tunes. "To me, 'Give Peace a Chance' is one of John's big statements to the world," McCartney said. "I'm not trying to make a saint out of him, but the Vietnam War was bought to a close by a mill details

When your band features a Beatle (George Harrison), a Heartbreaker (Tom Petty), The Bard (Bob Dylan), The Voice (Roy Orbison) and The Sound (Jeff Lynne), you're gonna be a pretty impressive outfit.

What's your favorite supergroup? There are plenty to choose from, to be sure.

Cream. Blind Faith. Derek and the Dominos. (OK, enough of the Eric Clapton groups.)

And there's Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The Highwaymen. Damn Yankees. Mad Season. Chickenfoot. Them Crooked Vultures. Velvet Revolver. Those are just the ones I can think of. There are certainly more.

My favorite? No question. The Traveling Wilburys.

When your band features a Beatle (George Harrison), a Heartbreaker (Tom Petty), The Bard (Bob Dylan), The Voice (Roy Orbison) and The Sound (Jeff Lynne), you're gonna be a pretty impressive outfit. If you've never heard the music of the Traveling Wilburys, take a few minutes and spend some time on YouTube. (I won't tell your bosses, colleagues or family members ... go ahead.) Let me know when you're done.

By: Chris Shields

Source: St. Cloud Times

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Global Beatles Day was founded, not with commercial purposes, but to commemorate their music and celebrate them collectively and individually. Even further tan Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison's magical tunes, The Beatles were huge on promoting peace and love, truth and youth, and most of all, the expansion of human consciousness. They explored the expansion of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, until they innovated and found new ways to make music. GBD is celebrated on June 25th because the hit song “All you need is love” was performed by The Beatles on the BBC produced program, Our World, on that same day in 1967.

In order to celebrate the four musicians, we’ve compiled a series of their greatest quotes; some of which made it into their song lyrics, and some others just went down in history.

“Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.” – John Lennon

“And, in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make.” – Paul McCartney

“It's all in the mind.” – George Harrison

“Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.” – John Lennon

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Perhaps the most surprising thing about Paul McCartney’s recent collaborations with rap superstar Kanye West — apart from the fact that Paul McCartney actually collaborated with Kanye West — is how dominant the former Beatle is on each song.

Though it’s coated with auto-tune and sung by West, “Only One” is the kind of crackling oddball that would sit right at home on 1980’s weird but sincere McCartney II, its punch-drunk keys and effects dropping out intermittently to reinforce West’s intense love for his young daughter and late mother.

“FourFiveSeconds” is sung largely by R&B hitmaker Rihanna. Its words are an ode to club-life catharses — “I think I’ve had enough/ I might get a little drunk/ I say what’s on my mind/ I might do a little time” — and it leans heavily on Rihanna’s serpentine croon and West’s earnest speak-singing. But the bright jangle of McCartney’s acoustic guitar and the ebullient lilt of the song’s infectious chorus recall the underrated joys of 1971’s Ram.

Following the December release of “Only One,” a shower of uninformed Twitter users reacted details

But Berwyn Mountains flying saucer investigator Russ Kellett insists the drawing of an encounter Lennon had with a flying saucer in New York is genuine.

The former girlfriend of John Lennon is reported to have claimed a rare drawing of a UFO by the Beatles legend, acquired by an expert on one of North Wales’ greatest mysteries, is a fake.

Russ Kellett, is known for investigating the 1974 UFO Berwyn Mountains incident involving theories of an extraterrestrial craft crashing in the area.

Mr Kellett said a few months ago he bought Lennon’s sketch of an encounter he had with a flying saucer in New York - the same year as the North Wales incident.

However May Pang, who was with Lennon at the time of their alleged UFO sighting in New York, has reportedly told the online magazine examiner.com it is a fake. She is reported to have said: “Seriously???!!!! This is not anything close to his drawing style. He never drew another one of the UFO sketch when he was with me. I have that one. He definitely would not draw one when he was living with Yoko and me in the pic.”

By: Steve Bagnall

Source: Daily Post

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Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe (23 June 1940 – 10 April 1962) was a Scottish-born artist and musician best known as the original bassist for the Beatles. Sutcliffe left the band to pursue his career as an artist, having previously attended the Liverpool College of Art. Sutcliffe and John Lennon are credited with inventing the name, "Beetles", as they both liked Buddy Holly's band, the Crickets. The band used this name for a while until Lennon decided to change the name to "the Beatles", from the word Beat. As a member of the group when it was a five-piece band, Sutcliffe is one of several people sometimes referred to as the "Fifth Beatle".

When the Beatles played in Hamburg, he met photographer Astrid Kirchherr, to whom he was later engaged. After leaving the Beatles, he enrolled in the Hamburg College of Art, studying under future pop artist, Eduardo Paolozzi, who later wrote a report stating that Sutcliffe was one of his best students. Sutcliffe earned other praise for his paintings, which mostly explored a style related to abstract expressionism.

While studying in Germany, Sutcliffe began experiencing severe headaches and acute sensitivity to light. In the first days of April 1962, he collapsed in th details

An Omaha teenager had a part-time job and money to spend. He had his own bedroom, with four blank walls. And he had a major man-crush on the Beatles.

The logical thing to do? Buy some costly acrylic paint and create a “Yellow Submarine” mural. It took more than a year and some trial and error, but when it was done, it made him proud. He signed his name and the date at the bottom: Jay Dandy, 1977.

It turns out that Dandy’s love for pop art and iconic artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein — and his affinity for the colorful decade that put them in the spotlight — have influenced a fair piece of his life since he moved away from Omaha.

He got an art history degree, became a pop art collector, met some influential people in the art world and now is a research assistant in the modern and contemporary art department at the Art Institute of Chicago.

To Dandy’s gratification, visitors to a late-spring estate sale at his childhood home still were able to see his pop-art masterpiece more than 35 years after he painted it.

By: Betsie Freeman

Source: World Herald

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He entranced The Stones and beguiled three-fourths of The Beatles.

Allen Klein managed the careers of them all for a good spell, making him one of the most important money men in the history of the music business. Until Fred Goodman's witty, gossipy and wonderfully well-researched new book, however, no one had the full skinny on the guy.

"Allen Klein: The Man Who Bailed Out The Beatles, Made The Stones and Transformed Rock n Roll" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt $27) tells the amazing tale of how its subject managed to woo the top stars of the day, with a formula that enriched them while enriching himself far more.

Tellingly, Klein didn't develop artists from scratch. His m.o. involved stalking established stars who were being underpaid by their record companies. Since nearly every musician was in that unfortunate position during Klein's peak years (the '60s and '70s), his predatory methods had plenty of takers.

During his reign, Klein managed Sam Cooke, Bobby Vinton, Donovan and The Kinks, along with Jagger and company and all the Beatles save Sir Paul. (McCartney opted to go with his father in law, John Eastman.)

Goodman, who previously penned "The Mansion on the Hill," which examined the ri details