Beatles News

I am writing with reference to the letter published on December 2, ‘In my life ... an ode to Christmas’. Regarding John Lennon’s song In My Life – from The Beatles’ 1965 album Rubber Soul – Bernie Smith said, “Lennon was a supreme wordsmith writing about his friends and lovers whom he would never forget...”

Steve Turner, in his book A Hard Day’s Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles’ Song (Revised Edition, 1999), discovered that Lennon’s lyrics share the style and sentiment of Charles Lamb’s 18th-century poem, The Old Familiar Faces. The first and last stanzas go like this:

“I have had playmates, I have had companions,

In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days,

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces ...

“How some they have died, and some they have left me,

And some are taken from me; all are departed;

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.”

Paul McCartney said Lennon wrote the lyrics for In My Life, based his melody on the previously covered Smokey Robinson song, You Really Got a Hold on Me.

Source: jamaica-gleaner.com

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The day the Julian Lennon album Valotte was released in 1984, my older brother and I pooled our lawn-mowing money and rode our bikes to Record Express in West Hartford, Connecticut. Our local top-40 station, 96.5 WTIC FM, was playing “Too Late for Goodbyes” every other song—MTV too—and we had to have it.

I still have the album. He’s on the cover, black-and-white, sitting backward on a chair, staring out at you, unsmiling. I know now, though I didn’t know then, how much he looks like his father in that shot. I was 9 years old. The album was probably my gateway to the Beatles, the first lesson in an education.

Lennon surrounded by reporters in 1984, the year his album Valotte was released. It earned him a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, and "Too Late For Goodbyes" became a number-one hit. Some speculated that the song was about his father.A year ago, I interviewed Lennon. The Beatles documentary Get Back had just come out, and Lennon had seen it with his half-brother, Sean. (Sean’s mother is Yoko Ono; Julian’s was Cynthia Powell, John Lennon’s first wife.) The interview was meant to be part of a larger project about what it’s like to have a s details

The Chrysler Museum of Art will present Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm from December 5, 2023 – April 7, 2024. Traveling from the National Portrait Gallery in London to Norfolk, the Chrysler Museum of Art will be the first venue in the United States to host this major exhibition, burnishing the Chrysler’s reputation as an institution committed to the presentation of the diverse histories of photography through exhibitions and the permanent collection.

Captured by McCartney using his own Pentax Camera, the exhibition features more than 250 photographs taken between November 1963 and February 1964, illuminating the period in which The Beatles became international superstars. The photographs were rediscovered in McCartney’s personal archive in 2020. McCartney describes this collection as “the eyes of the storm,” chronologically documenting the experiences of the band on their travels beginning in November 1963 at the height of Beatlemania and culminating with photographs taken in February 1964 during the final days of the band’s first triumphant trip to America. Most of these photographs have never been made into prints, existing as negatives and contact sheets for details

The release of the last Beatles song, “Now and Then,” ranks among the band’s pivotal moments such as their 1964 U.S. television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show and the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. The idea of a “final” Beatles song is a milestone; the most successful band in the history of popular music rallied together to give us one final masterpiece.

The Beatles have always captured our imaginations. Seeing the surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, interact with past images of themselves and their former bandmates in Peter Jackson’s “Now and Then” video is worth the price of admission. And hearing Paul harmonizing with John Lennon once again is emotional. It’s right up there with other Beatles reunion tracks from the 1995 Anthology series, “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love.”

Jackson’s innovative video features footage from the original 1995 sessions of Paul, George, and Ringo working on Lennon’s “Now and Then” demo. For me, seeing “The Threetles” together in the studio brought back the memory of another song featuring the surviving Beatles.

Source: Sean Gaill details

Paul McCartney's rider demands might be stricter that the rules he enforces on his employees.

Fans find Paul McCartney's rules for his staff to be professional and logical, not "beyond weird."
Many fans praised McCartney's calm security team rule as a genius idea.
Fans appreciate McCartney's desire to have a variety of instruments ready for studio sessions, considering him admirable and awesome, not weird.

He is among the biggest names in all of music. Paul McCartney continues to enjoy a remarkable career, past his fame and fortune with The Beatles.

However, like so many other artists, the musician needs to implement strict rules for his staff to follow. In the following, we're going to take a closer look at what those roles are, and if they're indeed, "beyond weird."

Fans don't seem to think so. We'll reveal what the fans had to say, while also taking a closer look at his rider demands. We can argue that the rider demands might be a little more difficult than his current rules for the employees.

Let's find out what they are, and more.

Source: Alex Passa/thethings.com

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Back in 1976, the world was still hurting from The Beatles’ break-up and during the first ever season of the now-iconic US show Saturday Night Live, the producer took it upon himself to do something about it. Lorne Michaels delivered a speech about the Fab Four directly to camera, saying, “I’m inviting you to come on our show” and imploring Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr to put their differences behind them and reunite. Adding a little extra incentive, Michaels then whipped out a cheque for $3000 – not an amount to be sniffed at back then – and said it would be theirs if they came back together on SNL.

It was, like most of SNL’s output, a gag intended to entertain and stir things up, but what Michaels didn't know was that two of the band were watching and actually considered it. As recounted in Man On The Run, Tom Doyle’s excellent book about McCartney in the 70s, Lennon and McCartney were actually watching the show together that night in Lennon’s Dakota building apartment, just 22 blocks north of where it was being filmed. They were, writes Doyle, “laughing their asses off and, just for a minute, actually considering his offer. &l details

The Beatles seemed to be on the verge of a breakup before recording 'Let It Be.' Producer George Martin couldn't believe they made another album.

When The Beatles told producer George Martin that they wanted to get back into the studio to record an album after Let It Be, he could hardly believe his ears. He assumed the band would break up. Recording Let It Be had been a miserable experience for all involved and he didn’t see a future for The Beatles.

In early 1969, The Beatles gathered to begin working on Let It Be. Tensions among the band members were at an all-time high. Their recording sessions for the White Album had also been challenging, and Let It Be was no different.

“This was a very difficult period,” Paul McCartney said in the book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles. “John was with Yoko full-time, and our relationship was beginning to crumble: John and I were going through a very tense period. The breakup of The Beatles was looming and I was very nervy.”

Still, the band decided to get in the studio again that same year to record Abbey Road. Martin found this astonishing.

Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com

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In 1969, Lennon and Yoko Ono delivered a highly unusual concert in a venue better known for droning lecturers than droning guitars

The year 1969 was predisposed to notoriety. Yet, it was before man made his first (and grammatically incorrect) step on the moon that John Lennon stepped foot into Lady Mitchell Hall. Complimenting the (less than musical) yelps of his new partner and collaborator, Yoko Ono, Lennon delivered nearly half an hour of improvised feedback generated using an amplifier and electric guitar to an audience that had no idea what he was going to perform. As The Beatles – and the 60s – imploded around him, John Lennon was certainly making an interesting career move …

“That was the big difficulty – how do you follow the Beatles?”

The Beatles played Cambridge before in 1963 as part of their near-endless tour of British theatres and art venues. Back then, Lennon and McCartney were on the cusp of their fame as songwriters and only just replacing rock and roll standards like ‘Twist and Shout’ with their own compositions like ‘All My Loving’ and ‘I Saw Her Standing There’. There would be a rapid development from these short details

The last time John Lennon’s one-time lover May Pang was visited by his ghost, it was while she was watching an episode of Law & Order. “But when you talk about stuff like this, people think you’re imagining it or are a little crazy,” the 73-year-old says. “So I don’t ever talk about it.”

For someone so savvy, Pang is astonishingly innocent. Or maybe it’s the other way round. She grew up loving The Beatles and met Lennon in 1970, when she was 22 (he was 10 years older). A receptionist for Allen Klein, she was – a year later – working as a personal assistant for both Lennon and his avant-garde artist wife Yoko Ono while they lived at New York’s Dakota Building. Lennon and Ono were having problems in their marriage; it’s a matter of record that Ono decided Pang would be a useful distraction. Having encouraged Lennon to make a move on Pang, she ordered Pang to comply. Pang had her doubts, but was too junior (and, once Lennon kissed her, dazzled) to demur.

A new documentary on the pair’s relationship – titled The Lost Weekend: A Love Story – explores what happened next. Pang and Lennon lived together in LA and New York. They details

The Beatles’ landmark 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band has been lauded more than just about any album in rock history. People talk about the concept, about the cover, about the way the album represented a new start for the Fab Four as a studio band who no longer played live. That’s all good stuff, for sure. But without the brilliance of individual songs like “She’s Leaving Home,” it’s impossible to imagine Pepper’s creating the impact that it did.“She’s Leaving Home” stands out as one of the loveliest and saddest songs on that or any other Beatles album, a piercing short story set against a beautiful, classical music-inspired backdrop. Because it wasn’t a hit single (there were no singles released from that record), many fans might not know the story behind it. How did Paul McCartney’s innocent perusal of the morning paper set the song in motion? What counterintuitive role did John Lennon play on the song? And why did it cause some hard feelings with George Martin, the band’s longtime producer? All the answers and more can be found below as we look back to this incredible musical accomplishment.

Source: Jim Beviglia/ameri details

Paul McCartney and John Lennon did not have a perfect relationship, but they reportedly harmonized in songwriting.

The Beatles lasted for a decade, and the band's career had also been plagued by controversies especially because of the beef between McCartney and Lennon. They eventually split due to different reasons, including Brian Epstein's death, Lennon's heroin use and his relationship with Yoko Ono, the issue of the Beatlemania phenomenon and McCartney's domineering.

McCartney-Lennon's partnership was not made to last that even other musicians knew it would come to an end one day despite the pairing's success.

However, McCartney recently opened up about their connection while promoting the paperback edition of his book "The Lyrics 1956 to the Present."

He spoke about his and Lennon's conflict, saying they worked hard not to fight during their songwriting processes.

"There was never much battling because if someone said, 'I like this better', it was generally a better idea. So you'd give into each other as long as it was a better idea," he shared. "There weren't many disputes because we were writing like this [facing each other] with acoustic guitars. And y'know I'm coming up with a bi details

On the latest episode of the McCartney: A Life in Lyrics podcast series, Paul McCartney looks back at The Beatles’ hard-rocking 1968 song “Helter Skelter,” which some people cite as an inspiration for the heavy metal genre. McCartney revealed that he was inspired to write the tune by a quote he’d read from a key member of another famous British Invasion band, The Who.“[I]t was [Who guitarist and songwriter] Pete Townshend talking about, ‘We have just recorded the loudest, dirtiest, rockiest thing ever,’” McCartney recalled. “And I loved that description. I just thought, ‘Wow, what a great idea. So what we’ve got to do is something loud and raucous and dirty [too].’”

McCartney remembered that he then went to the studio and told his Beatles bandmates, “I just read about Pete saying this, and I think it’s really a great idea. Let’s just see how loud you can get and how raucous and … let’s just try and really make the meters peak.”

As the podcast explained, The Beatles spent a lot of time working on “Helter Skelter,” recording several takes, including one that ran more than 27 minutes long. details

After the Beatles broke up, the fab four all went their separate ways with their careers. Paul McCartney went solo and formed the band Wings, George Harrison produced multiple outstanding solo albums, and Ringo Starr did… whatever Ringo Starr did.

John Lennon also went off to make his own music. He didn’t do it alone though. Alongside his wife Yoko Ono, Lennon formed the Plastic Ono Band. Ono has erroneously been blamed as the reason the Beatles originally broke up, but by the time they did disband, it was clear that Lennon’s priorities were in artistic projects with his new wife.

The band was first conceived of as a “Fluxus” band that emphasised the means of producing art over the finished product. Breaking out of many of the trademarks that the Beatles first curated on the music scene, the Plastic Ono Band was formed in 1968 as a multi-media art project more than a typical rock band.

Ono and Lennon had worked together extensively on music, collaborating on songs that Lennon would record with the Beatles, and performing live with the Scouse singer-songwriter throughout the end of the 60s.

Some of the first major acts of the Plastic Ono Band – really just the details

Teenage girls scaled fire escapes and hid in garbage cans outside a downtown Minneapolis motel in hopes of getting a peek at the Beatles when the band came to town in 1965.

The chaotic scene — Minneapolis' first and only taste of true Beatlemania — took place hours after the band's concert at Bloomington's Metropolitan Stadium. It drew a stern response from the Minneapolis Police Department, whose attempts to enforce a curfew gave the Fab Four the impression that this was a "very narrowminded town."

Reader Carol Becker heard from a friend that police were taken aback by the disorderly crowds that August night. Becker contacted Curious Minnesota, the Star Tribune's reader-driven community reporting project to find out just how wild it was — as teen girls once again descend upon Minneapolis this weekend to see Taylor Swift at U.S. Bank Stadium.

"Is it true there was a riot of 15-year-olds here when the Beatles came?" Becker asked.

To answer the question, we turned to our archives and some local Beatlemaniacs, who painted a picture of a wild, unforgettable night — but not quite a riot.

Source: Zoë Jackson, Star Tribune

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The Beatles dominated Christmas during the 1960s. A colossal, record-shattering success, the Fab Four helped completely reinvent pop culture, and were rewarded with an unprecedented four Christmas No. 1 singles.

‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, ‘I Feel Fine’, ‘Day Tripper’ and ‘Hello, Goodbye’ all stormed their way to the top of the charts, despite never actually mentioning snow, ice, mistletoe, or the big day itself.

Indeed, The Beatles kept their Christmas missives to their fan club members. Aware that the sheer volume of letters being received meant that replies couldn’t always be sent out in a timely manner, the band decided to record limited edition Flexi-discs, which were sent out as festive treats.

Usually it was knockabout stuff – the odd recording, a few messages here and there, maybe a Christmas joke or two – but in 1967 the band decided to go all out. The disc had a coherent theme, while a raucous poem from John Lennon – in a Scottish accent, no less – illustrated his bizarre, Joycean grasp of the English language; indeed, the poem is a kind of mirror to the joyous nonsense that fuelled ‘I Am The Walrus’ earli details