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Beatles News
There was one drummer besides Ringo Starr that George Harrison often depended on; Jim Keltner. Ringo and Keltner helped George make his 1987 album, Cloud Nine, sound authentic.During their time in The Beatles, George and Ringo worked well together. Ringo was the first drummer George connected with. They collaborated on each other’s songs. That didn’t change once The Beatles split.
George supplied guitar and songwriting help on many of Ringo’s albums. Meanwhile, Ringo added drums to several of George’s records. During a 1988 interview with Ray Martin (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters), George explained that he didn’t need to tell Ringo how to play his songs; he just understood and got to work. George knew what he was getting, asking Ringo to drum on a song.
“With Ringo, there’s certain songs with Ringo that, you know, I don’t have to tell him what to play, I just play him the song, and he just picks up his sticks, and he just does it, you know,” George said.
Source: cheatsheet.com
George Harrison didn’t enjoy listening to The Beatles‘ music on CD. He preferred to listen to his band’s music some other way.
During a 1987 interview with Charles Bermant (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters), George spoke about how he thought The Beatles’ music sounded on CD. He liked the older versions better.
“I did buy a CD player when they issued them, yeah,” George explained. “I listened to some of them. I still prefer the old versions, how I remember them on vinyl. There’s a lot of stuff that you can hear now that’s good.
“In some cases, there’s a lot of stuff that you shouldn’t hear so loudly, that’s somehow come out in the mix. On Sgt. Pepper I keep hearing this horrible-sounding tamborine that leaps out of the right speaker. It was obviously in the original mix, but it was never that loud.”
Source: cheatsheet.com
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George Harrison said no one knew how to operate sound at The Ed Sullivan Show. However, The Beatles were used to not sounding well during their shows.
Playing on The Ed Sullivan Show was a massive honor, especially for up-and-coming artists and acts from overseas. However, The Beatles, who already had a No. 1 hit in America, didn’t come cheap.
According to Mental Floss, The Beatles “would only agree to appear if the show covered their travel expenses and paid them a $10,000 fee (which would be just under $90,000 in 2022 dollars). Sullivan and his producers agreed, but only if The Beatles would commit to making three appearances. They had a deal.”
The performance turned out to be mutually beneficial. The Beatles got immense exposure that catapulted them into superstardom, and The Ed Sullivan Show got more viewers than ever before.
Source: cheatsheet.com
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Paul McCartney disliked a lyric from The Beatles’ “Hey Jude.” John Lennon convinced Paul to keep the line. “Hey Jude” became a hit single twice in the United Kingdom.
The Beatles‘ “Hey Jude” has some of the most famous lyrics in the Fab Four’s catalog. Paul McCartney felt he had to change one of the lyrics in the song. Subsequently, John Lennon convinced him to keep it.
In a 2021 Rolling Stone article, Paul said John discouraged him from changing a line in “Hey Jude.”
“I know exactly where I was,” Paul said. “I was in London, my music room at the top of the house, playing my little painted magic piano. John and Yoko were standing right behind me, on my shoulder, in fact.”
Paul was still experimenting with the song’s lyrics.
“They’re standing right behind me as I’m playing, ‘Hey Jude, da-da-da-da, da-da-da,’ and I get to, ‘The movement you need is on your shoulder,’ and I just looked by and I said, ‘I’ll fix that one,'” Paul recalled.
Source: cheatsheet.com
John Lennon said he had an easier time writing lyrics for The Beatles‘ songs than Paul McCartney did. In addition, he revealed he and Paul wrote two of The Beatles’ hits in the back of a van. Notably, one of those songs became a No. 1 single in the United States and the United Kingdom.
“I always had an easier time with lyrics, although Paul is quite a capable lyricist — who doesn’t think he is, therefore he doesn’t try,” John added. “He would avoid the problem rather than face it.”
John felt The Beatles’ early songs were vague. “In the early days lyrics didn’t really count as long as we had some vague theme: ‘She loves you, he loves her, and they love each other,'” he said. “It was the hook and the line and the sound we were going for. That’s still my attitude, but … I can’t leave lyrics alone; I have to make them make sense apart from the song.”
Source: cheatsheet.com
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George Harrison didn’t teach his son, Dhani, about his famous band, The Beatles. So George found it weird when Dhani came to him, asking about The Beatles’ song, “Hey Bulldog.” The former Beatle didn’t know where his son could have heard it.
Dhani grew up around a lot of great music. However, George didn’t sit him down and show him The Beatles. Dhani was nine years old when he saw his father perform for the first time at the Prince’s Trust Concert in 1987.
George told Rolling Stone that Dhani got into Chuck Berry first before George ever taught him about The Beatles. Dhani was upset that George didn’t play more of Berry during his performance at the Prince’s Trust Concert.
George explained, “He’s got to know a bit about the Beatles, but I’ve never pushed that on him, or tried to say, ‘Look who I used to be.’ I did my two cute songs: ‘Here Comes the Sun’ and ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps.’
Source: cheatsheet.com
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George Harrison accidentally formed The Traveling Wilburys in 1987. He needed to record an extra single for his album, Cloud Nine. He asked Jeff Lynne to help him write it, and Bob Dylan allowed them to use his recording studio. Roy Orbison and Tom Petty tagged along to watch them.
However, it seemed strange to George to have four of the best singers/songwriters in the studio with him and not work on the song. So, all five rock stars recorded “Handle With Care,” but the record company didn’t take the single because it was too good. George held on to it until he got the rest of the guys back together to record an entire album. Thus The Traveling Wilburys were born.
The supergroup recorded two albums, Vol. 1 and Vol.3. Shortly after they released Vol. 1, Orbison died. They never considered replacing him, but George often contemplated who would make good Wilburys.
Source: cheatsheet.com
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The late George Harrison rose to fame as the Beatles’ lead guitarist. He wrote hit songs for the group, including “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Here Comes the Sun.” Here’s what Harrison said about dying on his own terms.
During an old clip that appeared in the documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World, Harrison spoke about the moment he knew what he wanted to do for a living. He said he and his bandmates didn’t have a good reason to believe they would become established entertainers. All they had was a “feeling” that it would come true. (Here’s how Dolly Parton knew she wanted to be a singer.)
“There was no justification for it,” said Harrison. “We kind of had a feeling that that’s what we were going to do, and that you know, it was felt that something good was going to happen.”
Source: cheatsheet.com
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It was 1967 when Paul McCartney met American photographer Linda Eastman at a concert at The Bag O'Nails bar in Soho, London.
He and Linda had attended the concert with different groups of friends, but when Linda left her table to get a drink, she passed the famous Beatles singer.
"I stood up just as she was passing, blocking her exit. And so I said, 'Oh, sorry. Hi. How are you? How're you doing?'" he says in Barry Miles' biography Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now.
Watch footage of the couple's wedding day and an exclusive with Paul in the video above. The interview was captured just a year before Linda's death.
Source:Kate Rafferty/honey.nine.com.au
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By the 1990s, George Harrison was used to authors writing books about him. Some were more truthful than others. However authors chose to portray him in their books, George couldn’t complain about it.
Since The Beatles became famous, the press and other writers have written about George. Fan magazine made false accusations, and the press held uninspiring interviews and stereotyped the band.
In the early 1960s, Larry Kane spoke with George about Beatles fan magazines (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters). The radio DJ asked if the rumors bugged him. They did.
“It drives you up a wall sometimes,” George replied. “Since we’ve been over here they’ve been asking us, ‘Is John leaving?’ Well, the new one today is it’s me leaving. You know, that’s just because some idiot in Hollywood has written in the papers that I’m leaving, so now I will have for weeks people coming up time after time and asking, ‘Is it true you are leaving?'”
Source: cheatsheet.com
In August 1962, Ringo made the daring and hugely prescient decision to leave Rory Storm and the Hurricanes to join a new up-and-coming Liverpool band. He officially played with The Beatles for the first time at the Royal Horticultural Society's Annual Dance at Hulme Hall, Port Sunlight. Already friends with the boys from performing at the same gigs in Hamburg and the UK, according to Mike McCartney in his book, Mike McCartney's Early Liverpool, he was the perfect fit.
'Ringo's style of playing complemented John, Paul and George's music... He had a dry sense of humour and was able to fit in easily with the band.' - Mike McCartney
Mike captures Ringo in his photography and through illuminating anecdotes in his limited edition book, Mike McCartney's Early Liverpool and the limited edition print, Cavern Club Rehearsal.
Source: genesis-publications.com
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When it comes to shaking up the guitar world, in many ways Led Zeppelin were to the ‘70s what the Beatles were to the ‘60s.
Around a fortnight after Led Zeppelin released their eponymous debut album (opens in new tab) in January 1969, the Beatles performed together for the final time on the rooftop of their Apple Corps headquarters in London.
And as the decade that gave us Flower Power crossfaded into the era of hard rock, the airwaves grew heavier with the sound of electric guitar riffs.
Leading the way for myriad bands the world over, Zeppelin’s far-reaching appeal has inspired generations.
Source: Rod Brakes/guitarplayer.com
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Sir Paul McCartney’s picture book, Grandude’s Green Submarine, has inspired a special episode of online children’s yoga series Cosmic Kids Yoga.
The book, which was originally published last year, is the sequel to the music icon’s first picture book Hey Grandude! and follows Grandude and his grandchildren – known as the chillers – as they go on an underwater adventure to find their music-loving grandmother Nandude.
In a special episode of Cosmic Kids Yoga – a YouTube series written and presented by Jaime Amor – the adventures of Grandude and the chillers are blended with yoga to provide children across the world the opportunity to experience yoga and mindfulness through the power of storytelling.
Grandude and the chillers are guided to Nandude by her music, written by Sir Paul and featured in the special episode.
Source: PA News Agency/bridportnews.co.uk
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In 1971, legendary sitarist, Ravi Shankar, asked his long-time friend, George Harrison, to help with a humanitarian crisis happening in his native Bangladesh; the result was the Concert for Bangladesh. The former Beatle organized the benefit concert quickly.
George wanted to help Shankar and the Bangladeshi people. Every part of the Concert for Bangladesh had to be perfect, even its date.
In late 1971, Shankar told George about the humanitarian crisis in East Pakistan (formerly East Bengal).
A devastating cyclone had killed 500,000 people. After months of inaction from the West Pakistani government, people wanted a change, and Eastern nationals declared themselves the independent country of Bangladesh. It started a bloody war. The Western Pakistani troops committed genocidal acts on the Bangladeshi people.
Source: cheatsheet.com
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Though a majority of The Beatles’ songs were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, George Harrison accumulated hundreds of songs he had written for the band that never made the cut. Still, the guitarist managed to squeeze one or two songs onto Beatles albums, beginning with his first credited song with the band, “Don’t Bother Me,” off their second album, With the Beatles, and later on with Help! tracks “I Need You” and “You Like Me Too Much.”
As he was introducing more diverse instrumentation—sitar, tambura, 12-string, and slide guitars—into the band’s arrangements, Harrison continued to pilfer more space on the track list on subsequent releases with “Think for Yourself” and “If I Needed Someone” for the group’s sixth album Rubber Soul and the more tender ballad “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” which featured his friend Eric Clapton on the recorded version, along with four contributions off The White Album and his most famous Abbey Road offerings “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun.”
Source: americansongwriter.com