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Beatles News
Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die” was difficult to write. Paul asked a frequent Beatles collaborator to help him craft the song.
He said “Live and Let Die” prepared him to create one of his most famous albums.
Paul McCartney‘s “Live and Let Die” was written for the James Bond movie of the same name. Paul said the title of the song made it challenging to write. Subsequently, he explained how it paved the way for some of his other music.
The James Bond film Live and Let Die was based on Ian Fleming’s novel of the same name. According to the 2015 book Conversations with Paul McCartney, Paul read the book before writing his song “Live and Let Die.”
According to Entertainment Weekly, Paul told Mojo about his writing process. “On the Sunday, I sat down and thought, OK, the hardest thing to do here is to work in that title,” he said. “I mean, later I really pitied who had the job of writing Quantum of Solace.” For context, Quantum of Solace is the title of a later 007 movie.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
John Lennon’s first wife, Cynthia Lennon, described her life adjacent to the Beatles in her memoir. However, this experience also extended to other wives of the band members, with Cynthia Lennon sharing a close friendship with the self-described, ‘Beatles girls.” Here’s what we learned from John.
Around the same time John Lennon and Paul McCartney began writing music, the “Imagine” singer began his relationship with classmate Cynthia Lennon (then Cynthia Powell). After she became pregnant with her first son, Julian, the two got married.
That made John Lennon the first Beatle to get married. Due to safety concerns, the Beatles’ wives were rarely seen in public alongside the band. Still, they formed a close friendship, according to Cynthia Lennon.
George Harrison was the last Beatle to fall in love, doing so at 21 years old. He met Pattie Boyd while filming A Hard Day’s Night and married her shortly after. According to Cynthia Lennon, she was “friendly” and “easy to get on with,” similar to the “rest of us Beatles girls.”
Source: Julia Dzurillay/cheatsheet.com
John Lennon had a unique relationship with each of the Beatles members, as noted in the memoir John. That includes Ringo Starr who, according to Cynthia Lennon, often had the songwriter “in stitches with his jokes.”With Ringo Starr added as the final member of the Beatles, this band became the source of Beatlemania. John Lennon was even writing music before that, as part of the Quarrymen. Around the same time, he began a relationship with classmate Cynthia Lennon (then Cynthia Powell).
In her memoir John, Cynthia Lennon described her life adjacent to the Beatles. That includes her perspective on the band’s friendships.
“John’s relationship with each of the other Beatles was different,” Lennon wrote. “He was at his most relaxed with Ringo, who often had him in stitches with his jokes. He treated George with the mix of fondness and disdain as he might have shown a younger brother.”
The age difference was particularly noticeable when Harrison made music with Lennon and McCartney for the Quarrymen. He was a teenager when he first met Cynthia Lennon, with the celebrity describing him as a “kid who tagged along.”
Source: Julia Dzurillay/ details
According to George Harrison, American recording studios were superior to anything The Beatles used throughout the 1960s. However, the Fab Four didn’t exactly care that they were working with outdated equipment. They were still able to make hits.
“But those early sounds, I hated them,” George said. “I remember midway through the ’60s there’d be all these American groups we’d bump into, and they’d say, ‘Hey, man, how did you get that sound?’ And I realized somewhere down the line, I was playing these Gretsch guitars through these Vox amps, and in retrospect they sounded so puny.
“It was before we had the unwound third string, that syndrome, and because it was always done in a rush and you didn’t have a chance to do a second take, we just hadn’t developed sounds on our side of the water.
“I mean, listening to James Burton playing them solos on the Rick Nelson records, and then we’d come up with this stuff–it was so feeble.”
So, The Beatles were doing groundbreaking things without even knowing it half the time. Eventually, despite being innovative, other bands began influencing The Bea details
Paul McCartney said The Beatles’ “Drive My Car” was difficult to write. He said it had a “little twist” similar to the one in “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown).” The track was not included in the original American edition of Rubber Soul.
Paul McCartney said The Beatles‘ “Drive My Car” includes a lyrical twist. In addition, he said the song was challenging to put together. Notably, the track was initially released on different albums in the United States and the United Kingdom.
In the 2015 book Conversations with Paul McCartney, Paul said it usually doesn’t take a long time for him to write a song. He felt his best songs usually came together “in one go.” He said every time he tries to write a song, he wants to know if he’ll be able to finish it.
In addition, he discussed the origin of “Drive My Car.” He said he had a difficult time figuring out what the lyrics of the song should be. The Beatles came up with a line about gold rings and disliked it, but they couldn’t think of a substitute.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
The Grammy Museum Experience recently opened The Beatles exhibit and it has become one of the hottest attractions in Newark at the Prudential Center — apart from going to see the New Jersey Devils. Taking a stroll inside the exhibit, Beatles fans take a trip down memory lane, looking back at clothing worn by the band, photographs, and memorabilia from the 60s. Plus, there’s a lot to do at the exhibit with the interactive displays. Read on to learn more about The Beatles exhibit in Newark.
The “Ladies and Gentlemen…The Beatles!” exhibit was curated by the Grammy Museum and Fab Four Exhibits. The Newark location drew inspiration from the Los Angeles Grammy Museum, which previously had the same exhibit. The exhibit opened on Friday, November 18th, following the opening night reception where May Pang, a former music executive who worked for John Lennon and Yoko Ono as a personal assistant, made a special appearance.
Source: Diana Cooper/hobokengirl.com
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Joe Elliott of Def Leppard likes one Wings song better than all The Beatles’ songs. He said it sounded like someone having a picnic in a field in the countryside. He said he likes to listen to one of Wings’ albums when he lights a candle and takes a bath.
Joe Elliott of the classic rock band Def Leppard discussed his favorite Wings song. He said it sounded incredibly different from The Beatles’ songs. In addition, he contrasted it with some of Wings’ biggest hits.
In a 2022 article from Stereogum, Elliott discussed his favorite song Paul ever wrote. “With the greatest respect to everything he’s ever written in the world ever, and the obvious ‘Live and Let Dies‘ and ‘Band on the Runs‘ and ‘Jet‘ and etc., I’m going for ‘Little Lamb Dragonfly’ off Red Rose Speedway,” he said.
“When I first heard that song, I was 13 or 14,” he added. “There was something very melancholic about it that just sucked me in. It sounded like someone doing poetic license on phrases, sat on a blanket at some country field having a picnic.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
Over the years, John Lennon wrote a number of angry letters to Paul McCartney. The songwriting pair famously feuded over the years, and Lennon made his feelings toward his former bandmate clear through his strong language. In one letter, Lennon took issue with the way McCartney described The Beatles’ impact on music. He thought McCartney overstated the band’s importance.
By the late 1960s, tensions in The Beatles rose, and they grew increasingly frustrated with one another. Lennon and McCartney were particularly irritable with one another, which they expressed through songs in their solo careers.
“We were writing songs at each other,” McCartney said on The Howard Stern Show. “Like weaponizing songs.”
In McCartney’s “Too Many People,” he seemed to poke at Lennon and Yoko Ono’s anti-war activism. Lennon hit back with “How Do You Sleep?” In it, he wrote, “Those freaks was right when they said you was dead,” and “The only thing you done was yesterday/And since you’ve gone you’re just another day.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
John Lennon and Paul McCartney gave a No. 1 single to another singer. John played one of The Beatles’ most famous songs to this singer before it was a hit. The singer in question also recorded a hit cover of one of The Beatles’ early tunes.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney gave a No. 1 single to another singer. Subsequently, Paul explained why they did that. Notably, the singer in question had a few hits that were written by the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership.The Beatles’ original manager, Brian Epstein, was also the manager for Billy J. Kramer. According to the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul said he and John gave Kramer some of their songs because they were his friends. During a 2015 interview with The Vinyl District, Kramer discussed one of his interactions with Epstein. “He said, ‘We’ve been offered a record deal and you need an original song.’
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
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Ringo Starr’s “You’re Sixteen” features vocals from a rock star who was Ringo’s friend. The song became a massive hit.
It appeared on Ringo’s most successful album as a solo artist.
The 2015 book Ringo: With a Little Help discusses Ringo’s friendship with fellow rock star Harry Nilsson. “They became really, really close friends, and a lot of it was based on how much alike they were,” said Apple Records employee Chris O’Dell. “They shared a sense of humor. You can never underestimate Ringo’s sense of humor.
“It’s there, it’s a huge part of who he is,” O’Dell added. “Harry was also like that. He kind of lived in this bouncy little world of his own. It was the ’70s and everybody was partying, but I think they respected each other’s musical talents. They were like brothers.” O’Dell said Nilsson loved garnering the respect of other musicians.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
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Ringo Starr and The Beatles had women (not just teenage girls) swooning when they hit it big. The drummer seemingly lost the chance at one relationship in 1964 because he was intellectually dumb. Yet the drummer might not have minded. Ringo found love years earlier and spoke the sweetest words of the woman who became his first wife.
John Lennon got married soon after Ringo joined The Beatles. The drummer started a committed relationship with Maureen (Mo) Cox around the same time. Yet John had to hide his marriage and Ringo his relationship from the public; the predominating wisdom of the day said pop stars should be single to appeal to more female fans.
Female Beatles fans threatened (and in one case assaulted) Cox when she and Ringo started dating. Even as he spent nights at clubs and faced throngs of American fans after the Fab Four’s appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, the drummer remained committed to her.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
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When Paul Simon visited George Harrison at his estate in England, he asked him about boulders on the property. Harrison told Simon that the boulders had been there when he moved in. He told his former bandmate, Ringo Starr, a different story, though. Harrison made up a story to make Starr think Paul McCartney left him out of a promotional campaign.
Simon and Harrison became friends in 1976, after they performed on Saturday Night Live together. Simon visited Harrison’s home, Friar Park, for the first time in 2000.
“I hadn’t seen George for several years and was anxious to know, in person, how he was faring after the harrowing attack he’d endured just ten months earlier, on New Year’s Eve 1999,” Simon wrote for a special edition of Rolling Stone, “Remembering George.” “‘I’m really happy to see you,’ he said as we shook hands and embraced, ‘and these days, when I say I’m really happy to see someone, I mean I’m really happy.'”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison claimed he didn’t understand how so many different nationalities around the world knew and liked The Beatles. Every time he and his band traveled to a new place, George thought no one would know who they were. He was deeply mistaken
Throughout most of his life, George made contradictory statements about The Beatles. On the one hand, he thought they were innovative and a cultural phenomenon. At the same time, he didn’t think their music was that good. He sometimes even called his own songs average. To him, it was questionable if any of The Beatles’ songs would’ve been hits if any other band had recorded them.
If George believed The Beatles were only OK, despite their cultural impact, he would never understand why fans harped on about them and wanted them to continue.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
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Tonight Rod Stewart will hit BBC 2 at 8pm in a feature that will show off some of the star's biggest performances from throughout the years. While he has some legendary songs under his belt - such as Maggie May, Sailing and Do Ya Think I'm Sexy? to name a few - he was caught in controversy in 1980 by The Beatles star John Lennon. The Fab Four singer claimed Stewart had "used" some of the band's last-ever recorded songs.
Lennon said Stewart's song The Killing of Georgie employed the same melody as The Beatles hit Don't Let Me Down. The star told journalist David Sheff in 1980: "By the way, Rod Stewart turned that [Don't Let Me Down] into ‘[Georgie] don’t go-o-o.’ That’s one the publishers never noticed."
He jokingly asked: "Why didn’t he just sing Don’t Let Me Down? The same reason I don’t sing other people’s stuff: because you don’t get paid."
Source: Callum Crumlish/express.co.uk
Mary McCartney directing a documentary about Abbey Road Studios meant one thing was almost guaranteed: access to her dad. As a member of the most famous of all the famous bands to record there, Paul McCartney has some incredible memories to share in If These Walls Could Sing, now released on Disney+ (opens in new tab), with additional input from musicians including Elton John, Baba Ani, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, Noel Gallagher, Nile Rodgers and Kate Bush.
"The lunatics started to take over the asylum," says of the Beatles using the studio as a creative HQ in the late sixties as they evolved from a live band into studio artists. What Beatles producer George Martin's son Giles calls "painting pictures with sound".
"We'd sometimes have one mix going on up in the control room, number two, then we'd have another one going on in number three, so you had the run of the building," continues McCartney.
Source: Rob Laing/musicradar.com
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