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Beatles News
Whether he meant to or not, Ringo Starr often came across as the most easy-going of The Beatles. That might be why he played on many of the best solo Fab Four songs that featured former bandmates. Yet much of that work came in his 20s and 30s. Ringo found easygoing peace in a spiritual situation once he reached his 50s, and it makes sense it took that long.
He grew up in soccer-obsessed England, spent time living in temperate Monaco, and now resides in Los Angeles’ mild climate. Still, Ringo has a passion for skiing.
The drummer joined his Beatles bandmates and meditated with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India in early 1968. In his book Postcards From the Boys, Ringo said he found a spiritual situation on the slopes decades later:
Ringo found peace on the mountains in middle age, and it all makes sense when you look at his life.Ringo said skiing proved to be a peaceful spiritual situation when he was 50. When you view his life as a whole, it makes sense it took that long.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
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In 2001, George Harrison died of cancer, prompting an outpouring of tributes from his fellow musicians. In his prolific career, Harrison came into contact with hundreds of different artists. Here are seven who spoke about Harrison after his death.Harrison and Yoko Ono had a complicated relationship during his lifetime, but she offered a statement in tribute to her late husband’s bandmate.“George has given so much to us in his lifetime and he continues to do so even after his passing with his music, his wit and his wisdom,” she said, per ABC. “His life was magical and we felt we had shared a little bit of it by knowing him. Thank you George. It was grand knowing you.”
Harrison and Michael Jackson were on the radio show Roundtable together in 1979 to review new music. After Harrison’s death, Jackson issued a statement calling the former Beatle an inspiration.
“The world has lost a great spirit in George Harrison, a great musician, songwriter, and friend,” he said, per Billboard. “He was an inspiration to me, and I will miss him a great deal.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
The Beatles didn't want to spend time on George Harrison's song so they locked it away and forgot about it for almost 30 years. The Quiet Beatle himself admitted he really enjoyed the track. When The Beatles were composing their albums through the decades, George Harrison always fell short when the track listing was finalised. Because John Lennon and Paul McCartney were the primary songwriters for the Fab Four, Harrison and Ringo Starr only had a handful of their tracks included on their records. When The Beatles ventured to India in 1968, Harrison penned one long-forgotten track that the band simply did not want to work with.
Harrison wrote Not Guilty in 1968 while on a trip with the rest of his band.
He wrote both the music and lyrics, and painstakingly perfected the song to the best of his ability - but he couldn't get it exactly right.
Not Guilty was reportedly recorded and re-recorded just over 100 times, but the Fab Four simply "couldn't find a place for it".
Source: Callum Crumlish/express.co.uk
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Not for nothing is George Martin frequently referred to as ‘the fifth Beatle’. Yes, he was the band’s producer, but that title alone doesn’t do justice to the level of involvement he had on the band’s records, as documented in this recently published video from David Bennett.
Here, Bennett runs through the 27 Beatles songs that he believes George Martin contributed the most to. First up, he deals with his keyboard performances, which came when Lennon and McCartney needed someone who could play the kind of intricate parts that were beyond them. That’s why you hear Martin on songs such as Lovely Rita, Good Day Sunshine and, particularly memorably, In My Life.
Asked to write a piano solo for the song, Martin soon realised that the one he’d composed was too difficult to play at the tempo required. So, he used the ‘wound-up piano’ recording technique that had served him well when he worked with Billy J Kramer.
Source: Ben Rogerson/news.yahoo.com
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After two years with The Beatles, drummer Pete Best’s time with the band came to an abrupt end. Not long before the band got their first No. 1 hit, they fired Best and replaced him with Ringo Starr. A number of people who were tangentially attached to The Beatles wrote books about them or sold their stories to news publications. Best resisted doing this for years.
In the early days of The Beatles, they worked with several different drummers. When one drummer, Norman Chapman, had to leave the group for the National Service, they found themselves without a drummer ahead of their residency in Hamburg, Germany. Luckily, Best was looking for a job.
His band was about to break up, so Paul McCartney called Best to ask if he wanted to join them for the trip. Best agreed, and he went on to play with the band for the next two years.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
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Did you know “A Taste of Honey” (from the Beatles’ 1963 debut record, “Please Please Me”) wasn’t originally a Beatles song? It’s a cover of the Lenny Welch version of the song written by Bobby Scott and Ric Marlow for the 1960 Broadway version of the 1958 play of the same name (which was also turned into a 1961 movie). Honey was later mentioned numerous times in the song “Honey Pie” off of the 1968 album “The Beatles” — a.k.a. “The White Album.”The Beatles’ adult beverage of choice was clearly wine — at least when it came to song lyrics. We recall at least four mentions of wine: “A Taste of Honey” (“A taste of honey / Tasting much sweeter / Than wine”), “Norwegian Wood” (“I sat on a rug biding my time / Drinking her wine”), “When I’m Sixty-Four” (“Will you still be sending me a Valentine? / Birthday greetings bottle of wine”), and “Her Majesty” (“I wanna tell her that I love her a lot / But I gotta get a belly full of wine”).
Source: Matt Sulem/yardbarker.com
An archive of unseen photographs of The Beatles on tour at the height of Beatlemania have sold at auction for a hammer price of £5,000.
The behind-the-scenes pictures were taken during the band's 1965 US tour. They capture the Fab Four on stage, at press conferences as well as during the filming of the famous Ed Sullivan Show.
Dan Hampson, Omega Auctions manager, said there had been "unprecedented interest" ahead of the specialist Beatles memorabilia auction. The collection, which was sold with full copyright, consisted of 38 original prints, 12 rolls of film and colour transparencies, all taken in 1964 and 1965.
Pictures of screaming fans at the 1965 Shea Stadium concert featured in the collection. It also included pictures from the 1965 Shea Stadium concert, where the noise of some 55,000 fans was said to be so deafening neither the band nor the crowd could hear a note of what was being played on stage.
Source:BBC News
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James McCartney is no stranger to the spotlight thanks to his famous father, but the 45-year-old is rarely seen in public.
Sir Paul McCartney’s lookalike son has been spotted on the streets of London, out and about on a rare outing.
James McCartney – a dead ringer for his Beatles legend dad – was seen on his own in the St John’s Wood neighbourhood, where he was believed to be house-hunting.
The 45-year-old wore dark jeans with a blazer and business shirt when he was seen meeting a woman, believed to be a real estate agent, who let him inside a residence within the leafy London suburb.
James is the only son and youngest child of Sir Paul and his late wife, Linda McCartney. The couple also share three daughters: artist Heather, 60, photographer Mary, 53, and designer Stella, 51.
The Beatles great and Linda were married for almost 30 years before her death in 1998. He went on to marry Heather Mills in 2002 but they split in 2008 after six years of marriage and one daughter: Beatrice, now 19.
Source: Christine Estera/news.com.au
George Harrison‘s The Concert for Bangladesh was a seminal moment in the history of classic rock. John Lennon said it wouldn’t have happened if The Beatles didn’t break up. Subsequently, Yoko Ono contrasted The Concert for Bangladesh with The Beatles’ work.The book Lennon on Lennon: Conversations With John Lennon includes an interview from 1972. In it, John discussed The Concert for Bangladesh. “We wouldn’t have had Bangladesh, which is the most fantastic thing, [if The Beatles had stayed together],” he said. “And they’re blowing that movie up to 70 [millimeter film], apparently. And it’s gonna earn millions and millions for those people. It’s fantastic.
“And George is virtually an ambassador in the world now,” he added. “I think it’s fantastic. And he’s gonna go to India and Bangladesh and see where the money goes. He’s following it through. He’s taken on a great responsibility, and he’s doing it because he’s on his own and he’s found what he wants to do.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney almost called it quits after The Beatles broke up.
The rock legend admitted that when the group disbanded in 1970, he wasn't sure he would be able to embark on a solo career as he feared it would pale in comparison. In a post published on his website on Tuesday, McCartney answered fan-submitted questions about taking risks in his career. He replied, “The main question I had was whether to keep going after The Beatles because it was a hard act—some might say, an impossible act—to follow.” He continued, “The ingredients in the Beatles were so unique. You had John [Lennon] right there, who could have made any group brilliant. Then you had George [Harrison]'s talent, and Ringo [Starr]'s, and then me.”
The singer revealed that after they went their separate ways professionally, “I didn't know what to do with myself, and trying something new was really risky.” He added, “Then, of course, having [McCartney's first wife] Linda [McCartney] in Wings, when she was not a ‘musician,’ was a risk too.
Source: Emily Kirkpatrick/vanityfair.com
Remembering Ringo Starr’s Forgotten Acting Career After the Beatles
“They’re gonna put me in the movies,” Ringo Starr sang on The Ed Sullivan Show as the Beatles covered Buck Owens’ hit “Act Naturally.” The 1965 appearance featured songs from the group’s new film, Help!, director Richard Lester’s send-up of James Bond movies and other elements of spymania, as well as a follow-up to the greatest jukebox movie ever made, A Hard Day’s Night (1964). Both films put the rhythm up front. It was natural.
Prior to the nationally broadcast live performance, Starr prepared the audience by introducing himself as “all nervous and out of tune,” and smiled embarrassedly without missing or slowing a beat through his propulsive country swing. Starr was a natural performer, a locally famous beat-keeper in Liverpool before joining the Beatles, whose rhythm patterns had a character which set him apart from other drummers. His beats had personality. As the song says, he played the parts so well that he barely needed rehearsing for his first foray into a featured scene in a feature film.
Source: Tony Sokol/denofgeek.com
It was in the 1950s that record companies spotted an opportunity to release a new format that occupied a space between singles and long-playing records. Whereas singles were traditionally two tracks, and albums anything from 8 to 12 tracks, EPs (so-named to denoted "extended play") had four tracks. Artists often released these as “bite-sized” album-tasters, and in some cases, they even released all the tracks from an LP on a series of EPs, as they did with The Beatles' Yesterday EP.
Parlophone, The Beatles UK label had released a whole string of EPs by the band starting with “Twist and Shout” in the summer of 1963; it naturally topped the EP chart, a feat equaled by six more of their EP releases and when their Yesterday EP came out on March 4, 1966, it quickly climbed the chart and became their seventh No.1 on March 26, 1966, going on to spend seven weeks at the top of the bestsellers list.
Source:Richard Havers/yahoo.com
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Paul McCartney once wrote that “your mother should know.” But it was Elsie Starkey, the mother of Ringo Starr, who was key to the creation of his first studio recording outside of The Beatles. Sentimental Journey, released in the UK on March 27, 1970, was an album of remakes of standards designed to reflect Elsie’s favorite songs. They were the ones that she and the Starkey family would sing around the house and at special gatherings.
Starr began recording of the LP in late October, 1969, while The Beatles were still together. But by the time he finished, the group’s demise was close to being confirmed. The McCartney album followed three weeks after Sentimental Journey and, by the time Let It Be was released in May, The Beatles were effectively no more.
The 12-track Ringo Starr album was produced by the group’s trusted confidant, the much-missed George Martin. But it was constructed with the deliberate approach of using a different arranger on each track.
Source: Paul Sexton/yahoo.com
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John Lennon and Paul McCartney met as teenagers, and their decision to work together resulted in The Beatles. They were a part of one of the most influential and enduring bands of all time. After the band split, both also went on to have successful solo careers. If they had never met, though, would their lives have looked the same? According to Beatles producer George Martin, Lennon may have been content to keep his music as a hobby.In 1957, a friend brought McCartney to a village party where Lennon’s band, The Quarrymen, was playing. The band impressed McCartney, but Lennon was the one who clearly stood out to him.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
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While many refer to The Beatles as the fab four, producer George Martin was an essential fifth member. He was vital in ensuring every Beatles song and album sounded as good as it did. Martin had a role in every one of The Beatles’ albums. However, there was one album Martin wasn’t thrilled about, even though it’s one of the band’s most popular records.1968’s The White Album is a double album consisting of 30 songs. 19 songs were written during The Beatles’ trip to India for a Transcendental Meditation course. The album came after Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a concept album where the band worked together closely on the story and concept. The White Album consisted of many different sounds and styles, with each member contributing their own songs to the track listing.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
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