Beatles News

He was back for a sell-out concert earlier this year - but it wasn’t the first time Paul McCartney got back to where he once belonged.

Scouse superstar Paul returns regularly to Merseyside... The musical maestro and former Beatle has kept us all entertained over the years, both with the Beatles, on his own and with Wings. Not least in the 70s when he was a busy boy across the UK and indeed the world and, certainly, in his home town.

There was a UK Tour in ‘73 which saw him play two nights at the Liverpool Empire Theatre; his Wings All Over the World Tour in which he was back at the Empire in September ‘75 and his Wings UK Tour 1979 which he launched with his band members including lovely wife Linda in November for four nights at the Royal Court Theatre.

One lucky person who saw him then was Susan Lee, Liverpool ECHO print editor, who remembers: “As a 12-year-old my experience of going to gigs was fairly limited, which makes it all the more astonishing that one of my first – and that of a whole host of other Liverpool schoolkids – was to see an ex-Beatle.

“Paul McCartney came to town with his band Wings as part of a 19 date tour – and promptly put on details

Music’s greatest songwriting duo, Lennon/McCartney penned and released an estimated 180 songs together between 1962 and 1970, including the likes of ‘A Day in the Life’, ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ and ‘A Hard Day's Night’. The partnership came to an end with The Beatles’ split in 1970 and, owing to the subsequently prickly relationship between the two, would never be revisited in the years prior to Lennon’s untimely death in 1980.

The tragic nature of Lennon’s passing undoubtedly played a major role in McCartney’s unwillingness to talk about his songwriting partner in the short time after his murder. But that tactic has naturally softened to the point where, in the past five years, the 73-year-old has followed a policy of openness in interviews about the dynamic of his and Lennon’s relationship. Having most recently told Billboard that Lennon’s “whole life was a cry for help” (more on that shortly), we’ve rounded up the key interviews that McCartney has given on Lennon in the past five years in order to piece together his contemporary take on his old friend. 

Speaking on the US chat show Late Night, McCartne details

Linda McCartney may be best known as the late wife of Paul, but she was an artist in her own right, a celebrated photographer who shot iconic images of musicians like B. B. King and who became, in 1968, the first woman to land a cover of Rolling Stone. She was also the mother of four children: among them, the designer Stella McCartney and the photographer Mary McCartney, known for her candid-feeling portraits of eminent subjects like Queen Elizabeth II and total strangers (the latter she posts on her Instagram with the caption “#someone”).

Mary and Linda, who passed away from breast cancer in 1998, have individually shown their work many times: at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (Linda); New York’s International Center of Photography (Linda); London’s Royal Opera House (Mary); and London’s National Portrait Gallery (both, separately). But never have their photographs appeared side by side.

Until now: On Friday, “Linda McCartney and Mary McCartney: Mother Daughter” opens at New York’s Gagosian Gallery. The idea for the show, Mary tells me from London by Skype, originated with the gallery, but it was a concept she’d been contemplating for some time. A details

Fuck “Don’t Pass Me By,” says Ringo. At least, that’s what we have to assume, now that he’s selling his copy of the White Album.

Earlier in the fall, we got wind that the drummer and sometimes-singer of famous rock’n’roll collective/enclave/project The Beatles would be auctioning off lots of his finest and most valuable memorabilia for charity. This was said to include a drum kit and guitars that he and his bandmates (singers, guitarists and songwriters John Lennon and George Harrison specifically, if those names mean anything to you) used back in their glory days.

Now, several Ringo-based items have hit Julien’s in time for the Christmas season, so parties interested in snagging a couple of Ringo’s World Music Award statues for the kids should head on over there now — as well as those interested in shelling out 60k and up for a copy of Ringo’s copy of the Beatles 1968 self-titled album, which was notoriously packaged all in white.

Apparently, Starr’s mono copy is usually thought to be the very first copy of the album ever to be pressed. It has a “Factory Sample, Not for Sale” sticker on it, and a “No.0000001” details

When disaster strikes, musicians respond the way they know best: with song. As composer Leonard Bernstein said three days after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” And as the dust of a violent tragedy settles, you’re likely to hear one tune in particular: the contemplative strains of John Lennon’s 1971 “Imagine,” which reached number three in the UK when it was first released and sailed to number one after Lennon’s murder in 1980. On Saturday, Coldplay opened their L.A. concert with “Imagine” in tribute to the victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris. (The band had planned to unveil new material from their upcoming album, but ended up performing an acoustic set of older songs out of respect.) That same night, a man lugged his grand piano to the street outside the Bataclan—the site of the deadliest shootings—and delivered an instrumental version of Lennon’s hit to quiet applause and the flash of iPhone cameras.

These latest covers extend a long tradition of reaching for “Imagine” in the wake of terrible world events. The r details

The history of the $2 million drum head

You may remember last week we told you that a drum head used by Ringo Starr had sold for more than $2 million at auction. Well here's the full details on this incredible purchase.

The 20" Remo head was used during the Beatles' Ed Sullivan debut and was sold at Julien's auction in Beverly Hills. It fetched $2.125 million (a mere £1.4 million) and was purchased by Indianapolis Colts owner, Jim Irsay. It will now sit amongst Irsay's considerable collection of rare guitars.

After the sale Remo Belli, founder of Remo, commented the price was so sky-high that the company 'couldn't even afford to buy our drumhead back!'

The head was used for the duration of the Beatles' first American tour including all three Ed Sullivan appearances, a concert at Washington Coliseum and two shows at New York City's Carnegie Hall and was featured on the album covers The Beatles Second Album and Something New.

After the Beatles' American tour, the drumhead was kept at Abbey Road Studios, London, until it was auctioned by Sotheby's in 1984 and sold to an Australian restaurateur named George Wilkins for just under $9,000.

By: Rich Chamberlain

Source: Musi details

Piers Hemmingsen’s soon-to-be published book, The Beatles in Canada: The Origins of Beatlemania, includes an entire chapter on Smiths Falls’ RCA Victor plant and its role in introducing North America to the British boy band.

“For me, Smiths Falls is the birthplace of The Beatles music in North America. A lot of people just don’t know it,” Hemmingsen said. He welcomed former plant staff and musicians to the Kinsmen Pavilion Nov. 12 for a pre-launch of his 444-page book. Hemmingsen embarked on the research for the book in 2009 with the hope of filling in the gaps before the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. “The object of the book was to tell the true story of how Canada got The Beatles on the map ahead of the US,” the author said.

In 1962 The Beatles were up and coming with a fellow by the name of Paul White working in Canada to bring their sound to North America. His vision of what The Beatles could be, meant the nation received timely copies of every single the group came out with including their first single to hit Canada’s streets, ‘Love Me Do’. It was early in 1963 when this single was being produced in Smiths Falls and staff worked through the bitter cold details

Released 35 years ago today

It is, of course, impossible to separate the album from what happened immediately after it was released. In late November 1980, John Lennon made his musical return after five years of self-imposed retirement with Double Fantasy, a full-fledged collaboration with his wife, Yoko Ono; on December 8th of that year, he was murdered on his way home from a recording studio. Rather than being his comeback, Double Fantasy became Lennon's sweet, gentle farewell.

But it would have been a rock & roll event regardless. After a self-indulgent, eighteen-month "lost weekend," a separation from Ono and a few disappointing albums, Lennon had retreated into a life of domesticity in late 1975, devoting himself to being a househusband and a father to his son Sean. 

In the spring of 1980, Lennon and Sean sailed to Bermuda for a brief vacation; there Lennon became intrigued by New Wave musicians like the Pretenders, Lene Lovich and Madness. And when he heard the B-52's song "Rock Lobster," he was spurred to action. "It sounds just like Ono's music," he told Rolling Stone, "so I said to myself, 'It's time to get out the old axe and wake the wife up!'"

Source: Rolling Stone

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On November 13, 2000, The Beatles’ album 1 – an accumulation of every No. 1 hit The Beatles had in the United Kingdom and the United States – was released. Getting a No. 1 song is very tough. Some musicians have done it a few times. The Beatles, though? This album has 27 songs on it. And this is just their No. 1 hits, mind you; they’ve had plenty of other songs chart that are also fondly remembered and super popular. But even a band like The Beatles has some songs further down their discography. These are the, for wont of a better word, “overlooked.” So, we decided to rank them.

How did we measure this? With cold, hard logic. All songs that charted, or were released as A-side singles, were excluded. So were any songs that have showed up on the band’s various greatest-hits compilations. This includes the 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 albums. And even with all that, this list will still have a lot of popular songs you’ve heard of. To which we say: Of course it does. They are The Beatles. Still, by the standards of arguably the biggest band of all-time, these songs are the sleepers of a storied catalog. We’ve chosen 27 of them, for symmetry reasons.

A quick note on th details

An impressive collection of John Lennon's fans and peers will gather to celebrate what would have been the singer-songwriter's 75th birthday this year with a star-studded tribute concert. Willie Nelson, Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, the Killers' Brandon Flowers, Sheryl Crow and Eric Church will all perform at New York City's Theater at Madison Square Garden on December 5th to honor the former Beatle in a program titled Imagine: John Lennon 75th Birthday Concert. The show will be broadcast on AMC on December 19th at 9 p.m. EST. 

Other performers include Peter Frampton, Kris Kristofferson, Tom Morello, Aloe Blacc, Juanes, Train's Pat Monahan, Chris Stapleton and the Roots. The show's producers will announce more performers prior to the concert. "It's beautiful to see so many wonderful and talented musicians come together for this special show to celebrate John's birthday," Yoko Ono said in a statement. "John's art continues to give hope, light and happiness to generations of people everywhere. His belief that each of us can change the world continues to inspire the human race to believe in themselves, and his influence is everlasting in everyone's hearts as we all share in the possibilities and power of music."