Beatles News

Paul McCartney used his Pentax camera the same way he used his guitar: with total freedom. And in early 1964, the 21-year-old took his new camera on perhaps the most momentous musical journey of the 20th century: The Beatles' invasion of America.

Hundreds of photographs from that trip were recently rediscovered in McCartney's archive: "It was really nice," he said, "because I thought they were lost."

The images, collected in the new book, "1964: Eyes of the Storm," will be on view later this month at the National Portrait Gallery in London. 

He offered a tour of the exhibit to correspondent Anthony Mason.  

McCartney explained his process: "Taking photographs, I'd be just looking for a shot. And so, I'd aim the camera and just sort of see where I liked it, you know, oh, that's it.  And invariably, you pretty much take one picture.

Source: Anthony Mason/ details

The Beatles and The Beach Boys were rivals in the 1960s, but their competitive nature often led to the bands directly influencing each other1967’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is still The Beatles’ best-selling album. It was also their most experimental, as the band took on new personalities and dived deep into rock psychedelia. While the album saw the band at their highest peak creatively, it owes a lot to another project. According to producer Giles Martin, son of Beatles’ producer George Martin, Sgt. Pepper’s would not have happened without an album from The Beach Boys.

Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com

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Ringo Starr held out hope that he would perform with his Beatles bandmates again. He wrote a song expressing this hope.In 1970, The Beatles publicly announced their break up, and Ringo Starr wrote a song about his former bandmates. In each verse, he sang about his bandmates and wondered about the likelihood of them playing music with him. By the end of the song, he expressed his earnest hope that they’d all collaborate again. The song functioned as an open letter to the ex-Beatles, but Starr never truly had much cause for concern.

began working on their solo careers. Starr’s first solo single, “It Don’t Come Easy,” came out in 1971. The B-side of this single was the song “Early 1970.” In it, Starr addressed each of his bandmates in turn.

Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com

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Ringo Starr said The Beatles used drugs, just not in the studio. He explained that they learned this the hard way early in their career.Over the years, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr all spoke candidly about the way drugs impacted The Beatles’ music. They released albums that were heavily influenced by different substances, and they each felt that drugs helped open their minds. Despite this, Starr claimed that they never used drugs while in the studio. He believed this would have had a negative impact on their music.

After Bob Dylan introduced The Beatles to marijuana in 1964, they began frequently using drugs. Lennon described Rubber Soul as their “pot album,” and LSD had a large influence on their work in the latter half of the 1960s. After Lennon and Harrison tried it, they encouraged McCartney and Starr to use it as well.

“I’d take anything,” Starr said, per Rolling Stone. “It was a fabulous

Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com

Cynthia Lennon was not a fan of George Harrison when he was 15 and she was 20. He was the last person she wanted to visit her in the hospital. When George Harrison started playing music with John Lennon, he was 15 years old. Cynthia Lennon (Powell at the time), John’s then-girlfriend, was about 20. She thought of him as an annoying kid brother. When she got her appendix removed, he was the last person she wanted to see in her hospital room. According to the Beatles biography The Love You Make by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines, George was “the friend of John’s that Cynthia liked the least.” He had a way of annoying her. A big part of that was the amount of attention he gave to John.

Source: Kelsey Goeres/cheatsheet.com

George Harrison has many philosophical inspirations for his music, but he was inspired to write ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ from a less complex sourceGeorge Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is one of the best songs he wrote for The Beatles. He didn’t write many hits for the fab four, but this White Album song is one of his highlights. While this track would take many writers years to think up, Harrison found inspiration for it relatively quickly. Harrison didn’t write many hits for The Beatles, as most songwriting duties fell to Paul McCartney and John Lennon. However, when he did get the opportunity to write, he shined. A few of his tracks, like “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun”, remain classic hits in The Beatles’ discography.

Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com

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Some 54 years after its release on the iconic Abbey Road album, those lyrics still ring true for a legion of Beatles fans and perhaps especially for Hampton’s Ken Lambert.

On a bit of a whim, Lambert purchased the childhood home of Beatles legend George Harrison in an auction in November 2021. He has since seen Beatles fans from across the world come together in the modest abode at 25 Upton Green in Speke, a suburb of Liverpool, to celebrate Harrison and the Beatles.

A longtime Beatles fan, Lambert said it’s the people he has met along the way during this year-and-a-half magical mystery tour of sorts, along with the effusive reviews, that have made it worthwhile.

Source: seacoastonline.com

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Paul McCartney recognizes that John Lennon lived a “really tragic life” and he admires the way his bandmate dealt with it.

The late Beatles star endured a challenging childhood and continued to encounter difficulties in later years, his bandmate and co-songwriter said at the Tribeca Film Festival.

He and Conan O’Brien were discussing photos from McCartney’s new book 1964: Eyes of the Storm. O’Brien selected an image of Lennon seated in the back of a car around the age of 23, saying it carried an air of anxiety and vulnerability. “I don’t know about the anxiety, but the vulnerability is very true,” McCartney replied.

1964: Eyes of the Storm contains nearly 300 pictures taken by McCartney as the Beatles rose to superstardom. He thought he’d lost the trove of shots long ago, before they were rediscovered. “What I love about them is the innocence,” McCartney said. “We didn’t know we were going to get famous. We really wanted to be, but we didn’t know.”

Source: wbsm.com

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Guitar lessons: Before the chemical-fuelled studio experimentation of their psychedelic ‘middle’ period, The Beatles were a remarkably well-honed hit machine.

Their live-in-the-studio performances were tight, and their songwriting chops even tighter – they reeled off hits with remarkable sophistication for songwriters in their early 20s, with a work ethic that puts modern bands to shame.

With John Lennon locking down the rhythm, George Harrison’s instantly recognisable melodic lead guitar drew on 1950s influences including Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins, while his early adoption of the Rickenbacker 12-string guitar introduced the world to a sound that is now synonymous with the vocabulary of 1960s pop.

Read on for 10 timeless guitar lessons we can learn from John and George as they burned their names into the musical history books and gained the adoration of millions.

Source: Total Guitar/musicradar.com

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Paul McCartney has many memories of George Harrison and John Lennon and he often thinks about them to keep their spirits alivePaul McCartney often reminisces about George Harrison and John Lennon. While Ringo Starr is also like a brother to him, Harrison and Lennon grew up with McCartney, and the trio developed plenty of fantastic memories. While Harrison and Lennon are no longer here, McCartney still has many ways to remember his former bandmates and friends. Paul McCartney recently opened an exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery that featured pictures he discovered of The Beatles during the height of Beatlemania in 1964. He also recently released a book featuring these photos called 1964: Eyes of the Storm. In a recent interview about the book with BBC Radio 4’s Today, McCartney shared his thoughts when he sees photos of Lennon and Harrison.

Source: Ross Tanenbaum/ cheatsheet.com

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The watercolour painting of Lennon has been given a pre-sale estimate of £20,000. A portrait of John Lennon by his close friend and former bandmate Stuart Sutcliffe is to be sold at auction.

The pair met when they were both students at Liverpool College of Art and Sutcliffe was The Beatles' original bass guitarist, but he quit in July 1961 to focus on his art career.

The watercolour by Sutcliffe, who died in April 1962, is thought to be his only portrait of Lennon.

Chorley-based Tracks Auctions has given it a pre-sale estimate of £20,000.

The auction house said the work was painted by Sutcliffe in 1961 or 1962 at his studio in the attic of his girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr's family home in Hamburg.

A portrait of Kirchherr by Sutcliffe has also been included in the sale, with a similar auction estimate.

Source: BBC News/bbc.com

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In January of 1969, The Beatles entered Twickenham Film Studios to begin work on the music that would culminate in the Let It Be film and album. George Harrison, just back from his visit with Dylan and The Band in Woodstock, NY, was anxious to share his many new compositions with the group and, he hoped, to recreate the collaborative atmosphere he had experienced with The Band. Unfortunately, it was not to be.

John and Paul had always been the dominant songwriters in The Beatles. In their eyes, George was still the “kid” who didn’t have the same experience as a songwriter as Lennon and McCartney. Even as Harrison was writing better and better songs, such as “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “It’s All Too Much,” he was still fighting to get his songs the same attention as those of Lennon and McCartney.

Source: Scott Freiman/culturesonar.com

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Producer George Martin used a classical composer as an influence for the piano solo on The Beatles’ ‘In My Life’ Known as the fifth Beatle, George Martin was responsible for many of The Beatles’ most magical musical moments. He produced most of their projects and impacted their work more than fans might realize. One song where Martin’s impact can be heard distinctly is “In My Life”, as he created the infectious solo.While all The Beatles were trained musicians, none were classical music experts, nor did they know how to read sheet music. However, the band did find some inspiration in classical composers. In an interview with This Cultural Life podcast, Paul McCartney said he enjoyed Bach, and he was attracted to the “mathematical aspect” of his music.

Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com

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John Lennon knew The Beatles would break up after he met Yoko Ono.

Decades after The Beatles disbanded, talks about who caused the split continue to take over the internet as some blamed Lennon while others said it was because of Paul McCartney.

However, the late The Beatles member reportedly said in the past how meeting Ono sparked the beginning of the band's ending.

Lennon broke his silence before his death on Dec. 8, 1980, during which he said The Beatles' breakup started in 1966 when he met Ono.

The report reposted by Express UK noted that The Beatles cited creative differences, disagreements with the management, and band members' feuds as the reason behind the split. However, Lennon offered a different answer and said his wife was the reason behind the group's disbandment.

"The old gang of mine was over the moment I met her. I didn't consciously know it at the time, but that's what was going on," he said years after meeting her at an exhibition in London.

The couple first bumped into each other in November 1966 while Lennon was still married to Cynthia Lennon. Aside from The Beatles, Ono also caused Lennon's split from Cynthia.

Source: Angeline Sicily/musictimes.com details

George Harrison found Beatlemania overwhelming and voiced his frustration with the obnoxious antics of Beatles’ fans in a letter to a young fanGeorge Harrison was an essential member of The Beatles, but he found Beatlemania overwhelming. Fans turned out in droves to see the band perform when they came to town. However, many audience members didn’t know how to contain themselves, leading to them screaming like seagulls or behaving violently toward the band. The guitarist once expressed his frustrations with audiences via a letter he sent to a fan.

During the 1960s, Beatlemania took the world by storm. Thousands of fans would pack stadiums and concert halls whenever The Beatles came to their city. Their music dominated the charts, and everyone wanted to see the band that made rock n’ roll the mainstream genre of the industry.

Fans often took their love of the band to the extreme. Eventually, it caused The Beatles to stop touring in 1966. However, George Harrison accidentally gave fans ammunition when he mentioned in an interview that his favorite candy was Jelly Babies. Fans would then bring this candy to concerts and hurl them at the band. Harrison delivered a response to this in which he wasn&r details