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Beatles News
George Harrison may have been known as the 'Quiet Beatle', but by the end of the band's lifespan, he had proved to be a songwriting force.
While Paul McCartney and John Lennon shared songwriting duties for much of The Beatles' output, George Harrison eventually came out of his shell and showed just what he was also capable of.
Not only did he write and perform some of The Beatles' finest moments - 'Something', 'Here Comes the Sun', While My Guitar Gently Weeps' just for starters - but he went on to have his own successful solo career.
Here are just 10 of George's greatest solo songs:
Source: Tom Eames/smoothradio.com
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Ringo Starr didn’t enjoy playing drums on The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun.” Ringo felt the song was inspired by a certain genre of music. The tune appeared on an extremely popular album.
Ringo Starr didn’t enjoy playing on The Beatles‘ “Here Comes the Sun.” Subsequently, he discussed his feelings about the song and its success. Notably, the tune did not chart highly in the United Kingdom.Geoff Emerick worked as a sound engineer on The Beatles’ Abbey Road, as well as other classic albums such as Paul McCartney & Wings’ Band on the Run and Elvis Costello’s Imperial Bedrooms. During a 2022 interview with MusicRadar, he discussed his feelings regarding “Here Comes the Sun.” “Another George winner, and again, he knew it — his confidence was growing each day,” Emerick recalled.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
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While the Beatles broke up over 50 years ago, they were still making headlines in 2022, with Emmy wins, big tours and more.
Here’s a lowdown on all of 2022’s Beatles happenings:
—Paul McCartney launched his Got Back tour in Spokane, Washington, which featured a virtual duet with John Lennon on the Fab Four’s “I’ve Got a Feeling.” He wrapped the tour at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, with special appearances by Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi. It was also Paul’s 80th birthday, and Bon Jovi led the crowd in singing “Happy Birthday” to him.
–Lennon’s son Julian Lennon covered his father’s classic track “Imagine” for the first time during Global Citizen’s televised Stand Up for Ukraine special.
—Ringo Starr received an honorary doctorate from Boston’s Berklee College of Music.
–McCartney headlined the Glastonbury Music Festival in England, and was joined by special guests Bruce Springsteen and Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl. It was Grohls’ first time onstage since details
Dan Richter lived with and worked for the couple. He talks about his ringside seat at the bitter end of Lennon, McCartney et al
“I do think John used Yoko to help him break up The Beatles,” says 83-year-old actor and mime artist Dan Richter, who lived and worked with John Lennon and Yoko Ono as their personal assistant from 1969 to 1973. He was present at the recording of the band’s final album, Abbey Road, where Lennon insisted his second wife should be a central – and antagonising – presence.
At the time Ono was recovering from injuries sustained in a recent car crash and Richter describes her being placed “in this gigantic brass bed, all covered in white in a white night dress, right in the middle of the studio…So sitting at the [mixing] board all you’re looking at is Yoko in a bed. The rest of the band were just appalled.”
Source: Helen Brown/telegraph.co.uk
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The McCartney Legacy: Volume 1, 1969-73 by Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair is the most important book that’s been published about Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles work in years. And if this first volume is anything to by, the full series should be the definitive look at McCartney’s solo career.
“Originally, circa 2014, Adrian proposed writing a detailed sessionography for McCartney's work, along the lines of Mark Lewisohn’s The Beatles Recording Sessions,” Kozinn, formerly music critic at the New York Times, explains. “And he asked me to write wrap-around biographical chapters, to explain what was going on in Paul's life at the time he made each album. As we did the research, it evolved into a full-fledged biography — partly because during an interview with [Wings drummer] Denny Seiwell, he offered to let us use his wife's diaries and his own session log, which helped us establish an airtight timeline, and partly because Mark Lewisohn persuaded us that what was really needed was a biography.”
Source: Goldmine Contributors/goldminemag.com
The Brazilian artist who has been spreading the music of his country around the world for some 60 years was channelling The Beatles on December 28, 1968.
Pianist Sergio Mendes, a fixture in the American album charts with his group Brasil ’66 from that year onwards, was on the bestsellers again with Fool On The Hill. The record featured their version of the song from the Magical Mystery Tour EP of the year before, and on the last chart of the year, Mendes’ album climbed to the top of Billboard’s Bestselling Jazz LPs chart.
The album had entered the mainstream pop album chart at No. 102 in early December, soaring to No.58 and then No.18. As it hit the top of the jazz survey, it was at No. 11 on the pop side and would go as high as No. 3 in the new year, the group’s highest-ranking LP in the American market. Fool On The Hill was their third top ten album in two years, and their fourth gold disc.
Source: Paul Sexton/yahoo.com
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Ringo Starr released the song “Elizabeth Reigns” on his Ringo Rama album. Ringo Starr thought the song would lose him the knighthood. In 2018, Ringo Starr was knighted.
In 1997, Paul McCartney was knighted, and Ringo Starr received the honor over two decades later. Starr was happy to accept, but he hadn’t anticipated it. He believed that McCartney would be the only Beatle to receive the knighthood. Starr thought that one of his songs would disqualify him.
While Starr was in the studio with musician Dean Grakal, the latter asked what “ER” meant. It referenced the queen’s Golden Jubilee, and Grakal began to write a song about it.
“‘Elizabeth Reigns’ was a question from Dean Grakal,” Starr told Goldmine in 2003. “‘What does ER mean,’ because when we were recording at my place, Rocca Bella, it was Jubilee madness all over England. And the concert was corning on, one of the boys were there. And anyway on a day off they went into town and saw all these banners about the big Jubilee.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
On April 10, 1962, Stuart Sutcliffe died in the arms of his fiancée. He collapsed during an art class in Hamburg and died in an ambulance - he was just 21 years old.
Sutcliffe was an original member of the Beatles, introduced to John Lennon by a mutual friend at the Liverpool Art College. Convinced to play bass by Lennon and McCartney he joined the band on their much-mythised stint in Hamburg.
Despite his name not being echoed in the annals of music history like the rest of his former band-mates, his short life had a profound impact on the Beatles. Now, 60 years on from his death his legacy is being preserved by the Sefton Park Hotel, in Aigburth, Sutcliffe's family home from 1959 to 1971.
Source: James McNeill/liverpoolecho.co.uk
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John Lennon explained why George Harrison worked a certain instrument into the song. John was a huge fan of the instrument.
A sound engineer said one of The Beatles‘ songs “got close to a breaking point.” Subsequently, he said George Harrison incorporated “intense” instrumentation into the song. Notably, the tune in question featured an instrument that was revolutionary at the time.
Geoff Emerick was a sound engineer for Abbey Road. During a 2022 interview with MusicRadar, he discussed “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” “A fascinating song, very indicative of John’s mood at the time — he was consumed with all things Yoko,” he said.
Emerick was initially uneasy with one of John’s directives for the song. “I thought the song was going to have a fade out, but suddenly John told me, ‘Cut the tape,'” he recalled. “I was apprehensive at first — we’d never done anything like that. ‘Cut the tape?’ But he was insistent, and he wound up being right. The track, and side one, ends in a very jarring way.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison said The Beatles were shell-shocked from the 1960s. The Fab Four had been through a lot in the peace and love decade. However, they dealt with it in their own way.
In The Beatles’ early days, all the group wanted was to make music and make it to the top. When they arrived at the top, they realized it all came with a price. They had no idea how to handle becoming one of the world’s most famous rock ‘n’ roll bands.
Beatlemania blew them away. It was dangerous everywhere they went, and everyone wanted a piece of them. In Martin Scorsese’s documentary, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, George said he and the band were always a bit nervous during each step they went up the ladder, but that was the good thing about being a four-piece; they had each other, especially if things
got bad or overwhelming.
In a 1987 interview with Creem Magazine, George explained, “We always had a sense of humor. When we were left alone, the four Beatles, we had fun, and we had a good sense of humor. We took the ups and the downs together and, I think because we had each other, we helped each other from going crazy or having nervous breakdowns.
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George Harrison claimed the BBC could’ve been better. The former Beatle was never afraid to reveal his true opinions about things.
It says something about George’s personality that he could call out the wrongs of the BBC on the BBC. During a 1969 interview with David Wigg on BBC Radio, George explained that he wished the broadcast corporation’s radio division was more like American radio.
“The thing is that you can set a high standard and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a hit,” George said. “You know, this is one thing. I don’t know, the market for hits is … you know, I just can’t figure it out, I know when the Beatles put out a single it’s a ‘hit.’ But I don’t know if … sometimes I feel that if somebody else had put out the same thing but done in their way it mightn’t be a hit.
“I don’t know. It’s very difficult. I’ve really decided I haven’t got a clue what’s commercial and what isn’t. And that’s the problem, you know, trying to decide what is and what isn’t a single. I think the American idea is really good where they just put out an album and the st details
The Beatles' repertoire of music was made up largely of tracks written by the band's main songwriting duo, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. However, on a few occasions throughout the Fab Four's career, Ringo Starr and George Harrison were given opportunities to include some tracks of their own on the records. One of Harrison's biggest and best known was Taxman, which was put into their seventh studio album, Revolver. But the recording process was bogged down in politics.
Taxman was written and performed by Harrison on the record. However, he just could not find a way to finish the song perfectly. He felt it needed a solo but couldn't come up with anything good enough for the song.
Source: Callum Crumlish/express.co.uk
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A small café in Basking Ridge, New Jersey was recently graced with an unexpected visit from international music icon, Sir Paul McCartney and his wife Nancy Shevell.
Blue Café is well-known for its delicious food and great service as pointed out by Dolores Cirra, admin of the BaskingRidgeMoms Facebook group. TAPinto got to sit down with Barbara and Chris Chutnik who own Blue Café where they recounted their distinguished guests' visit - all thanks to Ms.Cirra's arranging.
Barbara immediately recognized the famous pair and warmly invited them to sit down while keeping it low-key as requested by their guests. As McCartney enjoyed a cappuccino, he chatted with Barbara about accompanying his wife on adventures involving her trucking business.
Source: Bobbie Peer/tapinto.net
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Paul McCartney has discussed finding it difficult to properly grieve and put into words what John Lennon meant to him after his former Beatles bandmate was killed in late 1980.
“It was difficult for everyone in the world, ’cause he was such a loved character, and such a crazy guy. He was so special,” McCartney said during a recent interview with SiriusXM’s The Beatles Channel about the making of his 1982 solo album ‘Tug Of War’.
“It had hit me, so much so that I couldn’t really talk about it,” McCartney said, explaining that he felt unable to share in the mass outpourings of tributes and collective grieving that took place following Lennon’s death.
Source: Alex Gallagher/nme.com
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In 1980, Ringo Starr called Cynthia Lennon, John Lennon’s ex-wife, to break the news that the musician had died. She said that in the grief, chaos, and confusion that followed, she had two clear thoughts. One was of a warning Lennon received from a psychic, and the other was of a number that had a bizarre importance in his life. She shared all the ways that it had cropped up in both his life and death.
In 1980, Mark David Chapman shot Lennon outside his New York City apartment building. Cynthia was in England, staying with Maureen Starkey, Starr’s ex-wife. That night, she was awoken by Starkey’s screaming.
“I was asleep in the spare room when screams woke me,” she wrote in her book John. “It took me a few seconds to realize that they were Mo’s. At that moment, she burst into my room. ‘Cyn, John’s been shot. Ringo’s on the phone — he wants to talk to you.'”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
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