Beatles News

The Beatles fans were used to the unusual statements John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr historically made during interviews. However, in 1963, the group released a Christmas message specifically tailored to their fan club members. What was the real meaning behind their holiday message?

Per Rolling Stone, between 1963 and 1969, the Beatles sent limited-edition Christmas singles to their fan club members every year. These singles were unlike anything fans had ever heard from the Fab Four.

These plastic records consisted of messages, skits, and songs. These rare 45s were hard to come across until 2017, when the Christmas messages were ultimately reissued on vinyl as part of a limited-edition box set titled, The Christmas Records.
During their first fan club Christmas message, the Beatles used wordplay, music, and gags to introduce themselves to fans. Although the 45 had many traditional elements and personal statements, there was plenty of goofing around too. However, the real meaning behind the record was to show gratitude for fans’ support.

Source: Lucille Barilla/cheatsheet.com

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Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr share a unique bond as the only surviving members of The Beatles. Their relationship started deepening its roots almost as soon as Ringo joined the band. The drummer roomed with only one bandmate on tour — Paul. Even before then, Macca knew Ringo was the perfect drummer for The Beatles when he sat in with the group. They’ve been friends for more than 60 years, so it shouldn’t be a surprise Paul wrote a song for Ringo’s ex-wife when she died. It’s a touching ballad, but Paul explained why he didn’t mention her name.

Source:Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com

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Rarely do you see Elton John – a Grammy-winning Knight of the British Empire – behaving like a bona fide fan boy. 

Yet that’s precisely what happens midway through the new documentary “If These Walls Could Sing” (Disney+, streaming Friday), Mary McCartney’s touching tribute to the myriad artists, ranging from The Beatles to Oasis, who recorded at London’s Abbey Road Studios.

John recalls a day in 1969 when he was just a young session piano player on the Hollies’ “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother." Suddenly, Paul McCartney appeared and promptly sang the recently released “Hey Jude” to the slack-jawed group. 

“He probably has no idea what that moment meant to me, but hopefully now he does,” says John, visibly moved.

Source: oakridger.com

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Mary McCartney spent her childhood at Abbey Road Studios, one of the most legendary recording facilities in the world, where her parents made music together.

McCartney, daughter of Beatle Paul McCartney and photographer Linda McCartney, has fond memories of being raised in a "normal" household - one filled with love and music. Now, she’s looking back at the London locale’s history in a new documentary titled "If These Walls Could Sing."

"What inspired me to make this film was my love for Abbey Road," the 53-year-old told Fox News Digital. "I’ve grown up going to Abbey Road over the years, but I didn’t realize it was 90 years old until I was invited to direct the documentary. So that really inspired me. And I wanted to know more. And I learned so much through the process. But it started with my love for the building and the people that worked there over the years."

Source: Stephanie Nolasco/foxnews.com

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Ringo Starr enjoyed plenty of musical success with The Beatles. The Fab Four changed popular music forever with their iconic albums and chart-topping singles. Ringo had an intimate relationship with a drummer who wanted to take his place in The Beatles, but his solo career wasn’t quite as cozy with the charts. Still, Ringo’s songs found plenty of success during his solo career.

Ringo was supremely talented on the drums but less musically inclined than his bandmates. Still, the other Beatles typically let Ringo sing at least one of their songs on each album.

He also sang on several notable Fab Four songs (“Act Naturally,” “What Goes On,” and “With a Little Help From My Friends”).

Though he admitted he lacked songwriting skills, several Ringo songs landed on the charts during his solo career.

Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com

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Bassist Willie Weeks said George Harrison‘s 1974 Dark Horse tour was the “classiest” tour he’s ever been on. Meanwhile, George didn’t feel too glamorous. At least George’s backing band felt comfortable.

In early 1974, shortly after his wife, Pattie Boyd, officially left him for Eric Clapton, George traveled to India with his musical guru, Ravi Shankar. According to Here Comes The Sun: The Spiritual And Musical Journey Of George Harrison by Joshua M. Greene, they stayed in an ashram in the holy land of Vrindavan.

Being there gave George a magnificent feeling. Suddenly, he wanted to do a tour, which was surprising. The last time George toured was in 1966 with The Beatles at the height of Beatlemania, which exhausted him, aged him, and made him paranoid.

Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com

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The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever” was the first song by the Fab Four that Yoko Ono heard. Someone showed her the song at a cocktail party. “Strawberry Fields Forever” became a hit once in the United States and twice in the United Kingdom.

You know, it’s like [Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s] A Little Night Music was from that Magritte painting of a black tree with half a silver moon on it,” he said. “It’s irrelevant to the musical, except to know that the guy saw that picture and got this idea or whatever.”

“And it was so funny,” she said. “I was in sort of a cocktail party that was given by an art critic, you know, and then he said, ‘Listen to this,’ and he just put that on. 

“And I said, ‘Can you imagine pop songs coming to this? What do you think … the world’s come to this, pop singers start doing this?'” she added. “I thought, ‘Wow!’ And that’s why even now, I get emotional when I hear this one. That’s the first Beatles song that I’ve heard.”

Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatshe details

 Despite breaking up in 1970, the Beatles remain icons of modern-day pop culture. Their music continuously gets rediscovered by generation after generation. Rediscoveries have led to everything from remastered recordings to a Cirque du Soleil show. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr have since enlightened the general public about their time in the band and allowed stories behind their music to emerge.

Harrison was a friend of McCartney's from school. In 1958, this connection brought him to the Quarry Men, Lennon's band which McCartney had joined a year prior (per Ultimate Classic Rock). Harrison may have been known as "the quiet Beatle," but he proved to be an integral part of the band, especially in the group's later albums. He even made it onto Rolling Stone's 2015 list of the best guitarists of all time. One of Harrison's shining moments with the Beatles was on the song "I Want to Tell You."

Source: Anna Robinson/grunge.com

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Yes, I am a Beatles maniac, but I’ve usually steered clear of Beatles bootlegs that contain subpar performances, or recordings that demonstrate the evolution of their material.

Same with Hendrix. I don’t need to hear the private first stirrings of a song’s development…kind of like how I don’t feel a need to see Marilyn Monroe waking up with a hangover.

That said, after hearing Let It Be... Naked (opens in new tab), I knew I had to own it, because in many ways this 2003 release is obviously, and sometimes inexplicably, a far superior record to the original 1970 album release (opens in new tab).

As the story goes, the Beatles handed off the Let It Be tapes to producer Phil Spector in the hope that he could eke out an album from what the group perceived as an uneven collection of recordings.

There were some good songs among the tracks, but the basic order was, “Phil, have a go and make it nice.” I suppose Let It Be has been my least favorite Beatles album, despite the curious greatness of “Dig a Pony” (what the heck is that song about?) and Paul’s and John’s youthful spirit as they revisit “One After 909,” one of the earl details

George Harrison‘s wife, Olivia, said their son, Dhani, became an anchor at his father’s tribute, Concert for George. George’s spirit was present through Dhani.

“It was [Clapton’s] idea,” Goerge’s widow, Olivia, told Rolling Stone. “He phoned me not long after George died and said, ‘I’d like to do something.’ Eric was a very deep friend of George’s, so I felt confident and relieved that it was Eric coming to me.”

“Olivia had given me this job of being musical director,” Clapton explained, “to single out people for certain songs, and I found that really hard. We were all quite protective of our relationships with George.”

At London’s Royal Albert Hall, a year to the date of George’s death, his friends came out to show their love for him. George’s fellow Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr made memorable appearances and the guys in Monty Python lightened the mood. George’s fellow Traveling Wilburys, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne brought even more great music.

Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com

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Sir Paul McCartney's lookalike son James showed his support for his father at the London premiere of Beatles documentary If These Walls Could Sing on Monday.

The musician, 45, kept it casual as he stepped out with a guest at the star-studded premiere for the Disney+ documentary at Abbey Road Studios.

James is the only son of the Beatles singer, 80, and his late wife Linda McCartney - who also had two daughters, photographer Mary, 52, and designer Stella, 50.

Julian Lennon has admitted that Richard Curtis’s film Yesterday was ruined for him by a “weird” scene involving his late father John Lennon.

Himesh Patel and Lily James starred in the 2019 romantic comedy about a musician who wakes up one day to find that nobody remembers The Beatles and decides to pass their music off as his own.

While none of the Beatles were involved in the film, they and their families gave their approval for it to go ahead, while the filmmakers spent $10m (£8.1m) on the rights to the band’s music.

However, one scene that divided fans – once referred to as a “Marmite scene” by director Danny Boyle – sees Jack (Patel) take a road trip, when he runs into John Lennon (Robert Carlyle) at a remote English countryside home.

Having chosen love over fame and fortune and with The Beatles never having existed, John has lived into old age away from the public spotlight.

Source: Isobel Lewis/independent.co.uk

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It was a bad move, probably the worst thing he could have done at the moment. Paul McCartney, the most publicity-savvy of the Beatles, knew that the instant he hurled a bucket of kitchen scraps at a pair of unwanted visitors to High Park, his hard-to-find, harder-to-reach farm in the Scottish countryside, near Campbeltown.

As the vegetable scraps, dirty water, and dinner leftovers flew through the air, Paul focused on his targets and realized that he knew one of the intruders. Terence Spencer, a photographer best known for his war coverage, had shot the Beatles periodically, starting in 1963.

Now on assignment for Life magazine, which had chosen him because of his relationship with the Beatles, Spencer was tagging along with Dorothy Bacon, who had been assigned to track down McCartney and get his response to a rumor sweeping the globe, to the effect that the doe-eyed bassist, singer and songwriter had been killed in an automobile accident in 1966, and that the Beatles, having suppressed word of his death, filled their post-1966 recordings with “clues” pointing to the truth.

Source: Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair/lithub.com

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In a new interview with QFM96's "Torg & Elliott" radio show, AC/DC singer Brian Johnson was asked if he has ever met somebody famous that he was "in awe" of. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Yes, that has happened, and it was [THE BEATLES legend] Paul McCartney. I didn't know what to say to him. I mean, for the first time I was absolutely tongue-tied. And then [fellow BEATLES legend] Ringo Starr walked in beside him. And it was Paul that spoke to me, 'cause he heard me talking to somebody. And he said, 'Hello, Geordie.' You know, because they call us Geordies, with the accent. And I went, 'Hello, Paul. Sir Paul. Your honor. Your majesty.' I didn't know what [to call him]. [Laughs] I just came across like I was breaking a friend's teeth in — I couldn't speak. So it was hard. And then we became friends, which is even harder to describe. If you're in a hotel and somebody like McCartney says, 'Fancy a spot of lunch, kid?' And you go, 'Yes.'"

Source:blabbermouth.net

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In 1962, Ringo Starr joined The Beatles, replacing drummer Pete Best. The band had hired him because they believed he was a better drummer than Best, but Starr soon began to worry that they were questioning his abilities. Just two weeks after Starr joined the band, they replaced him with a session drummer during a recording session. Starr immediately began to worry that they were going to fire him.

After replacing Best, Starr joined the band in the studio. He struggled with his timekeeping on the song “Love Me Do.” Producer George Martin wasn’t happy about this. 

“I didn’t rate Ringo very highly,” he said per the book Ringo: With a Little Help by Michael Seth Starr, “He couldn’t do a roll — and still can’t — though he’s improved a lot since.”

Martin was unsatisfied with Starr’s performance, so he decided to replace him with Andy White, a session drummer, in another recording session. 

Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com

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