- Register
- Log in to Tune-In
- Wishlist (0)
-
Shopping cart
(0)
You have no items in your shopping cart.
Beatles News
The Beatles are hailed as the greatest band of all time. To this day, the group’s music has transcended the times and inspired every generation of music since the 1960s. However, early reviews of The Beatles reveal that the group was not always beloved by critics.
Regarded as the most influential group of all time, The Beatles won countless awards during their career and after their break-up. While The Beatles reached critical acclaim, the group did not receive it immediately. In 2014, the Los Angeles Times compiled early reviews from when The Beatles first traveled to the U.S.
“With their bizarre shrubbery, the Beatles are obviously a press agent’s dream combo. Not even their mothers would claim that they sing well,” the Los Angeles Times wrote in 1964.
In 1964, The Boston Globe wrote, “The Beatles are not merely awful; I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are god awful. They are so unbelievably horribly, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art that they qualify as crowned heads of anti-music…”
Source: cheatsheet.com
They remain the biggest band of all time. Yet the Beatles barely lasted a decade and imploded at the end of the 1960s amid rumours of feuds between the band members and their wives. When the devastating news was revealed in 1970, many fans blamed Lennon's wife, Yoko Ono, for tearing the band apart. In a major unearthed interview from 1971, Lennon (with Yoko in the background) discusses the end of the band and the reports of fighting. But is he telling the truth?
Lennon immediately points out that he was with his first wife Cynthia when the Beatles started and it never affected the band. He said: "I was married before the Beatles left Liverpool and that never made a difference."
The other Beatles would certainly have had some loyalty to Cynthia, who John married in 1962, and there was no denying Yoko was the reason that marriage ended. But many believed it was Yoko's artistic career that drove a wedge between Lennon and the band as he put his second wife and her needs first.
Source: Stefan Kyriazis/express.co.uk
Read More<<< details
By 1968, The Beatles featured three premiere songwriters vying for space on the band’s records. If you didn’t deliver your best work, there was a good chance your song would get bumped. That happened to George Harrison on Sgt. Pepper a year earlier; then it happened again on The White Album.
Indeed, even on a double album, The Beatles didn’t have room for George’s “Sour Milk Sea” or “Not Guilty.” So it’s safe to say there was some stiff competition at this point in the band’s run. That’s going to happen with Paul McCartney and John Lennon writing songs for the same records.
But the competition didn’t end with songwriting. Since these three Beatles all played guitar, bass, and keyboard, you also had jockeying for who might play what on a particular track. Hence Paul taking a guitar solo on “Taxman” and John doing the same on “Get Back.”
Source: cheatsheet.com
details
Certain album covers are iconic. Everyone remembers Michael Jackson posing on the cover of Thriller and a baby reaching for a dollar bill on the cover of Nirvana‘s Nevermind. The cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band arguably stands as the most famous album cover of all time. What might shock fans is that John Lennon wasn’t allowed to realize his vision for the cover. In an interview with GQ, Sir Paul McCartney remembered how “I mean, on the Sgt. Pepper cover he wanted Jesus Christ and Hitler on there. That was, ‘Okay, that’s John.’ You’d have to talk him down a bit — ‘No, probably not Hitler…’ I could say to him, ‘No, we’re not doing that.’ He was a good enough guy to know when he was being told.”
When asked why John wanted Hitler on the cover, Paul replied “It’s a laugh. We’re putting famous people on the cover: ‘Hitler! He’s famous!’ And it was like, ‘Yeah, but John, we’re trying to put heroes on the cover, and he’s not your hero.’”
Source: cheatsheet.com
It’s been nearly a year since the announcement of the still-untitled Beatles film being helmed by Academy Award-winning director Peter Jackson, but some release details may have leaked.
Beatles fan blog The Daily Beatle found a listing on Amazon for a book titled Get Back: The Beatles, and it’s slated for release on October 15, 2020. The site also reports the book will act as companion material with Jackson’s film, which will be draw from 55 hours of never-released footage of The Beatles in the studio, shot between January 2-31, 1969. This footage came from the original filming of Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s documentary Let It Be, which ended with the famous rooftop concert.
Jackson said in a statement when the film was originally announced, “The 55 hours of never-before-seen footage and 140 hours of audio made available to us, ensures this movie will be the ultimate ‘fly on the wall’ experience that Beatles fans have long dreamt about – it’s like a time machine transports us back to 1969, and we get to sit in the studio watching these four friends make details
The Beatles released their eighth studio album, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, almost 53 years ago in May 1967. One thing many fans (and maybe even non-fans) think of when it comes to the album are the vibrant suits Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, and George Harrison wore on the cover.
As it turns out, over five decades later, Ringo Starr's bright pink outfit still fits him. In a recent interview with Extra, the legendary musician showed off some pretty spectacular photographs from his decades-long career. When he got to a photo in his infamous suit he quipped, “the suit still fits!”
The Beatles drummer also spoke about a song near and dear to his heart, “Grow Old With Me” which was written by the late John Lennon. Starr recorded the song for his 20th studio album, What's My Name, released last October while the song was originally released posthumously in 1984.
Source: iheart.com
details
Fifty years ago this weekend, The Beatles completed their last recording session as a group.
The single to which they were putting the final touches was Let It Be, a McCartney masterpiece first recorded the previous year, onto which Harrison now added his famous electric guitar solo. Within weeks, the band would have split for ever.
This was no surprise: 1970 had dawned and Lennon and his long-time collaborator McCartney had scarcely shared a civil word in months.
David Wigg, a veteran Fleet Street and BBC journalist, interviews Paul and Linda McCartney. Wigg’s interviews took place between 1969, just after the release of the album Abbey Road, and 1973, by which time the band had no chance of re-forming.
Source: Mark Edmonds/dailymail.co.uk
details
Alongside John Lennon, Paul McCartney wrote some of the most memorable songs of the modern world. However, The Beatles legend has revealed why he doesn’t really listen to his hit tunes anymore. Promoting his new book Hey Grandude! on The Penguin Podcast, the 77-year-old said: “I don’t listen to a lot of Beatles music, I don’t listen to a lot of my own music.”
McCartney continued: “You’re often onto the next thing and I’m always there doing something because I enjoy working.
“But what is nice is when we remaster or when there’s a project particularly The Beatles from sixty years ago or it’s an anniversary – it’s fifty years, it’s sixty years.
“I have to listen to it to approve it and to say the remaster is a great job.
“So we play the remastered sound alongside the old sound and you know, sometimes the old sounds better.”
Source: George Simpson/express.co.uk
details
Some songs in the Beatles catalog took a long while before seeing the light of day. “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number),” the wacky B-side on the “Let It Be” single (March 1970), is a good example.
The Fab Four first started work on “You Know My Name” in early 1967. That May, they took it to the studio and worked out basic tracks for the song. By June, they had a number of odd effects and, somehow, the Stones’ Brian Jones playing sax on the track.
But nearly three years passed before they finished the song and released it. That type of timeline wasn’t too far off from one of the signature John Lennon songs: “Across the Universe.”
After putting in significant studio time on the song in February ’68, the song probably sounded complete to some ears. However, the track wouldn’t be the next Beatles single — or turn up at all on The White Album or Abbey Road.
Source: cheatsheet.com
details
UMeIn October, Ringo Starr released a new studio album called What's My Name that he made with a little help from a bunch of his musical friends, including his old Beatles band mate Paul McCartney. Sir Paul contributed bass and backing vocals to a cover of a John Lennon rarity called "Grow Old with Me."
The track features a guitar solo by Ringo's brother-in-law, Joe Walsh, and string arrangements by Jack Douglas, who produced Lennon and Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy album. Starr revealed that he decided to record "Grow Old with Me" after Douglas sent him Lennon's original demo of the tune, on which John can be heard saying that the song would be great for Ringo to record.
What's My Name also features the talents of Edgar Winter, Dave Stewart, Benmont Tench and three of Ringo's current All Starr Band members Steve Lukather, Colin Hay and Warren Ham. Hay, best known as the frontman of Men of Work, wrote the title track.
Source: abcne details
John Lennon and Yoko Ono endured a brief separation around 1973 and because of it, The Beatle’s rarely heard cover of The Ronettes iconic hit ‘Be My Baby’ acts as a pleading love letter.
Recorded late in 1973 as part of the Rock ‘N’ Roll sessions for Lennon’s covers album with infamous producer Phil Spector, the track remained a rarely heard bootleg for many years until it was finally released as part of The Beatles singer’s solo Anthology box set back in 1998.
Lennon’s may well be one of many, many covers of the 1963 hit written by Spector, Ellie Greenwich, and Jeff Barry, but none sound quite like this. Much of that was down to Phil Spector picking up on a new arrangement of The Ronettes song ‘Baby I Love You’ from none other than Cher.
Source: Jack Whatley/faroutmagazine.co.uk
details
In May, McCartney released an expanded, deluxe box-set version of his chart-topping 2018 studio album Egypt Station dubbed the "Explorer's Edition." That same month, the Beatles legend kicked off a new U.S. leg of his ongoing Freshen Up tour.
In August, Sir Paul revealed that he was working on his first stage musical, penning music and lyrics for a production based on the classic 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life in collaboration with Tony-winning playwright Lee Hall.
In early September, McCartney published a new children's book called Hey Grandude!, about a super-cool grandfather who, thanks to his magic compass, is able to take his grandkids on wondrous adventures. That same month, Paul and his Beatles band mate Ringo Starr attended two separate events in London together -- one promoting a new book of photos taken by McCartney late wife, Linda, and the other celebrating the release of the 50th anniversary reissue on the Fab Four's Abbey Road album.
Source: ABC News Radio
Depending on how you look at it and even depending on whom you talk to, The Beatles’ Abbey Road album either was or wasn’t “supposed” to be their final record.Obviously, if you’re just going by the basic timeline of LP releases, the band dropped the Let it Be album in the first part of 1970, several months after Abbey Road, but band enthusiasts know full well that the songs recorded on Let it Be were actually recorded a year earlier, in the early part of 1969 (with Across the Universe even dating back to 1968). The band considered the songs from that recording session not up to their standard and shelved it. In the meantime, John and Yoko got married, George got deep(er) into Hinduism, Paul began seriously contemplating life after the Beatles, and Ringo…
Source: Salome G /cultofwhatever.com
details
Did The Beatles’ drug use really carry over into the studio? In a 1971 interview, John Lennon scoffed at the idea. “We weren’t all stoned making Rubber Soul because in those days we couldn’t work on pot,” he said. “We never recorded under acid or anything like that.”
Speaking in 2004, Paul McCartney reiterated the point. “It’s fairly easy to overestimate the influence of drugs on The Beatles’ music,” Paul told the Daily Mirror. “The writing was too important for us to mess it up by getting off our heads all the time.”
If you read about The Beatles in the studio — taking a full day to get down a guitar solo and so forth — you can see how adding LSD or some other heavy drugs to the mix wouldn’t have helped. (Speed, which John didn’t mention in the quote above, was a different story.)
Source: cheatsheet.com
details
While many Beatles songs have interesting stories behind them, some are more intriguing than others. “Get Back,” the band’s 1969 hit single, offers a good example. That track may have been inspired by George Harrison, got Billy Preston a rare album credit, and aroused suspicions in John Lennon.
“Hey Jude,” the band’s smash-hit single from the previous year, is another track with plenty of tales surrounding its making. From the song’s original inspiration (Julian Lennon) to the curse word that got left in the recording, there’s plenty to mull over in this one.
The recording of “Hey Jude” brought enough drama on its own. When Paul McCartney brought the song into the studio, he saw it as a piano ballad that would build up to a raucous singalong. But, being a guitar player, George had ideas about enhancing the song.
Source: cheatsheet.com
details