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Beatles News
Paul McCartney was proud of writing 1 Beatles song. He could hardly believe it when a friend disliked the song for its sound.
Throughout their time as a group, The Beatles received praise for the way they pushed musical boundaries with their songs and albums. This has earned them a permanent place in the musical canon. As they were releasing songs, though, it occasionally brought them ridicule. While listening to a new Beatles song, a friend responded with disbelief. He thought it sounded like a joke.
In 1965, The Beatles released Rubber Soul. The album marked a shift for the band into more introspective, mature songs. When the band played one of the album’s songs, “Michelle,” for a friend, though, he responded with confusion.
“We’d just put out ‘Michelle,’ and I remember one night at the Ad Lib club David Bailey hearing it and saying, ‘You’ve got to be joking — it is tongue in cheek, isn’t it?'” Paul McCartney said in The Beatles Anthology. “My reaction was: ‘Piss off! That’s a real tune,’ and was quite surprised that he’d think that.”
Over time, though, McCartney grew to understand Bailey details
Best Classic Bands site reports that George Harrison will be the subject of a new biography coming from acclaimed Beatles biographer, Philip Norman. The book will be titled George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle.
It is described as a rare and revealing portrait of the most misunderstood and mysterious Beatle, and is based on decades-long research and unparalleled access to inside sources. The publishing date is set for October 24, 2023, from Scribner in the U.S. and Simon & Schuster in the U.K. Norman is the author of the New York Times bestseller John Lennon: The Life and the million-copy selling Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation.
In its announcement, the publisher notes: “Despite being hailed as one of the best guitarists of his era, Harrison, particularly in his early decades, battled feelings of inferiority. He was often the butt of jokes from his bandmates owing to his lower-class background and, typically, was allowed to contribute only one or two songs per Beatles album out of the dozens he wrote.”
Source: Ljubinko Zivkovic/livinglifefearless.co
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John Lennon said The Beatles didn't pay much attention to their manager. Still, they didn't want to make music without him.
The Beatles began working with their manager, Brian Epstein, on their rise to fame. He helped them grow as artists and was an essential part of their success. Though he appreciated the way The Beatles changed his life, he once decided he’d had enough of them. The band told him that if he sold them to another label, they would stop making music altogether.
Though Epstein was the band’s manager, he didn’t have all that much power over them.
“Brian could never make us do what we really, really didn’t want to do,” John Lennon said in The Beatles Anthology. “He wasn’t strong enough.”
Epstein grew frustrated with this dynamic, though, and eventually told The Beatles he was going to sell them to another label. They refused to listen to him on this, either.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
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Ringo Starr lied about his job to impress girls. He shared that this didn't always work out the way he intended it to.
Before The Beatles, Ringo Starr’s career ambitions had a lot to do with what would look good to girls. After recovering from an illness, Starr took a job on a boat with hopes of earning a position at deep sea. He also hoped the position would win him popularity with women. His attempts at flirting didn’t often go well, though.
Starr was sick for much of his childhood. Once he began to recover, he took a job on a local boat, hoping it would launch a career for him.
“Then I worked on the St. Tudno, a pleasure steamer that went from Liverpool to Menai in North Wales,” he said in The Beatles Anthology. “I wanted to go deep sea, and this was an easy way to get my ticket. If you did three months on the local boats, it was easier to get on the big liners. I got as far as the day boats, but that was it.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
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"Day Tripper" by Otis Redding (1966)
Since the Beatles had great respect for Redding as an artist, it made sense the soul and R&B legend would take his turn at one of the band's biggest hits. "Day Tripper" seemed like a song made for Redding's special vocal styling. His soulful take on the classic, with Booker T. & the M.G.'s backing him up, is one of the great covers of all time.
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"Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band" by Jimi Hendrix (1967)
The legend goes that Hendrix was so captivated by the title track from one of the greatest records of all time that he couldn't wait to play it live on stage. He did so just days after the record was released. In true Hendrix greatness, he shreds from beginning to end without an ounce of pretentiousness. Hendrix was not shy about his respect for the Beatles, and the feeling was mutual, as Paul McCartney would often talk about.
Source: Jeff Mezydlo/yardbarker.com
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The Beatles returned in 2023 with their first new single in decades, much to the delight of fans. The band’s “Now And Then” cleverly utilized artificial intelligence technology to allow all four members of the group to contribute to the tune–even though half of the outfit is no longer with us. “Now And Then” became a quick hit on many Billboard charts, but on most of those, it didn’t hold on very long.
The single is still present on a handful of Billboard rankings to this day, months after it was released. As the cut continues to perform well, it has not only become a welcome win for the group, but their longest-charting hit single on a number of lists.
“Now And Then” has spent the most time on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. That tally ranks the most-consumed rock and alternative tracks in the U.S., as its name suggests. The list uses a methodology that combines sales, streams, and radio airplay to show what rocking tunes America loves.
Source: Hugh McIntyre/forbes.com
Paul McCartney cites the crowds as a reason he continues touring as the 'Got Back' tour concludes.
Paul McCartney recently reflected on the “Got Back” tour and revealed why he keeps touring.
“When people ask me, ‘Why do you still do it (touring)?' it's because of the crowds,” McCartney revealed. “Brazil has been fantastic. It's a beautiful nation. When you go on stage with an audience like that, the feedback you get, it's like meeting a dear friend in the street you haven't seen for a long time. But it's that 40,000 times over.”
Since the Beatles' breakup, McCartney has continued going strong. He has released several solo albums and even formed a second band, Wings. As a part of Wings, they embarked on five tours. After Wings' dissolution, McCartney has embarked on 17 solo tours.
The “Got Back” tour was McCartney's first since the pandemic. It kicked off with a show in Spokane, Washington. 15 shows were played across North America, and the tour's first leg culminated with a headlining show at the Glastonbury Festival. In 2023, McCartney and his band hit the road again.
Source: Andrew Korpan/clutchpoints.com
Of course, Paul McCartney‘s work with The Beatles will always be a major calling card. However, his solo work is equally (if not more) impressive. Without his bandmates in tow, he could truly flex the expanse of his musicianship.
McCartney put an onus on writing and performing songs all on his own. A famously particular recording artist, McCartney has been documented making his fellow Beatles record take after take trying to get a song the way he envisioned it. Going at it completely solo likely freed him up from having to relay his vision to those around him. Instead, he simply put pen to paper and notes to tape.
Find the four best songs written and performed solo by McCartney, below.
Source: Alex Hopper/americansongwriter.com
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A painting by The Beatles will make $600,000 at its auction sale in New York in February if estimates are met.
The picture, Images of a Woman, is jointly credited to all four band members. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr have all clearly signed it.
It will be sold on February 1. The estimate is $400,000 to $600,000.
“It’s such a rarity to have a work on paper outside of their music catalog that is [a] physical relic, this tangible object with contributions from all four of the Beatles,” Casey Rogers of the auctioneers told News Miami. “It’s memorabilia, it’s a work of art… It’s a wonderful piece of storytelling.”
It’s hard to price such a unique item.
A full set of four Beatles signatures can be worth 10s of thousands of pounds with the right context.
The illustrated manuscript of “The Singularge Experience of Miss Anne Duffield,” a Lennon piece from his book, A Spaniard in the Works, fetched $209,000 when it was auctioned in 2014.
This piece is well-known. Its provenance is fully documented. The circumstances of its painting are recorded in most Beatles biographies. It a details
The Beatles' appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in February 1964 may have brought Beatlemania to North America and inspired a generation of musicians to try their hand at rock'n'roll, but it wasn't the first time the quartet appeared on American TV.
Three months earlier, on the November 18, 1963 edition of the Huntley-Brinkley Report, NBC News' correspondent Edwin Newman anchored a segment which gave US audiences their first taste of the excitement surrounding The Beatles. The broadcast included concert footage filmed at a show at the Winter Gardens in Bournemouth two days earlier, when three American networks – NBC, CBS and ABC – had been given permission to film.
There's no surviving footage from this broadcast – which Newman closed with the sneering comment, "Robert Percival, an artist, proposes to capture the Mersey Sound on canvas. Percival, mercifully, is deaf" – but viewers at home got further chances to acquaint themselves with the band who would change the world. Both NBC and CBS would run news bulletins that took a similar tone (NBC reported that the band made "non-music"), while ABC wouldn't use their footage at all.
Source: Fraser Lewry/loudersound.com
In tribute to the producer, who would have celebrated his 98th birthday today, Radio X picks ten songs of his greatest knob-twiddling, string-wrangling, tape-reversing genius.
"Good George Martin is our friend / Buddy, Pal and Mate / Buy this record and he'll send / A dog for your front gate."
That’s how John Lennon paid tribute to the Beatles producer in the sleeve notes to Big George’s orchestral album of Fab Four tunes, Off The Beatle Track, back in the halcyon days of 1964. Here at Radio X, we’d like to pay tribute to the late musician, arranger and producer, who died aged 90 in March 2016, by picking a handful of tracks that demonstrate his knob-twiddling genius. Thanks George - it wouldn’t have been the same without you.
Twist & Shout (from the album Please Please Me, March 1963)
Source: Martin O'Gorman/radiox.co.uk
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When The Beatles left Hamburg, Paul McCartney said his father hardly recognized him. The experience had completely worn him out.
Paul McCartney and the rest of The Beatles grew tremendously as musicians while performing in Hamburg. While they all acknowledged that the experience shaped them into better performers, it wasn’t always easy. McCartney said that his father could hardly believe his appearance when he returned home to Liverpool. His time in Hamburg had reduced him to a skeleton.
Though Hamburg was a valuable learning experience for The Beatles, it was also an exhausting one. They slept in cramped, uncomfortable quarters and played onstage for hours each night. John Lennon admitted he used to get so tired he would fall asleep onstage.
“My voice began to hurt with the pain of singing. But we learnt from the Germans that you could stay awake by eating slimming pills so we did that,” Lennon said in The Beatles Anthology. “I used to be so pissed I’d be lying on the floor behind the piano, drunk, while the rest of the group was playing. I’d be on stage, fast asleep. And we always ate on stage, too, because we never had time to eat. So it was a real scene … It details
Since you are reading this in a senior publication, there’s a good chance that you not only remember Ringo Starr’s “You’re Sixteen” from 50 years ago, but the original 1960 version by Johnny Burnette, as well.
Burnette was born in 1935 and lived with his parents and brother Dorsey in a Memphis housing project that included equally poor neighbors Vernon, Gladys and Elvis Presley.
After school days ended, music lovers Johnny, Dorsey and a mutual friend formed the hard-driving Johnny Burnette Trio. They toured constantly and recorded some high-octane 45s that went nowhere. (Rockabilly collectors now lust after those obscure plastic discs.)
Later, Johnny and Dorsey Burnette moved to Los Angeles to become songwriters for Ricky Nelson (“Believe What You Say,” “It’s Late”). As a solo artist, Johnny Burnette signed with Los Angeles’s Liberty Records and proceeded to cut some minor hit singles.
Burnette’s only Top 10 career tune was the bouncy, violin saturated “You’re Sixteen,” which ended up on the best-selling soundtrack of George Lucas’ 1973 nostalgia movie “American Graffiti.” In 1964, Jo details
On This Day, January 2, 1969…
The Beatles began rehearsals for what would wind up being their final studio album together, Let It Be.
Rehearsals took place at Twickenham Film Studios and were marred by tension within the band, which was captured on film as cameras were recording the sessions for a documentary.
Let It Be was released in May 1970 along with the documentary of the same name, which featured The Beatles’ unannounced rooftop concert, their last public performance together. The album, which featured such classic Beatles songs as the title track, “Get Back” and “Across the Universe,” went to #1 in the U.S., the U.K. and several other countries.
The footage from the Let It Be documentary was later used by director Peter Jackson for the Emmy Award-winning docuseries The Beatles: Get Back, which was released in 2021.
Source: ABC News/kshe95.com
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After a busy year, Sir Paul McCartney sat down to answer 23 fan questions on his official website.
Asked what his highlight of 2023 was, the 81-year-old didn’t hesitate to say: “The GOT BACK tour!”
As for what is his favourite song to play live on his solo tour, which has been to Oceania, Mexico and South America this year, he chose a Beatles classic.
He replied: “Probably Hey Jude, just to see all those thousands of people singing in harmony with each other.”
Admitting that his favourite does “vary” from time to time, he’s certainly not short of choices.
Another fan asked: “Would you ever release a soundcheck album featuring some of the covers you do before the live show?”
McCartney replied: “It’s a thought! We have the ‘jams’ – we always start the soundcheck with a made-up piece, and there’s a lot of them. So, we might go through those and do something someday.”
Check out the full list of questions here.
Source: George Simpson/express.co.uk