Beatles News

The State Farm Center, located at 1800 S. First St. in Champaign, will be home to performance of Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band on August 20.

The former drummer of The Beatles Ringo Starr will be performing with his band at the State Farm Center on Aug. 20.

Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band will make a stop in Champaign as part of a 2019 tour which marks the band’s 30th anniversary. The band played their first show at the Park Central Amphitheatre in Dallas, Texas, in 1989.

The rock band announced the North American expansion of its 2019 tour back in January. The band performed nine concerts in Japan earlier this year.

Starr is the only constant member of the band, with the rest of the lineup shifting. Twelve variations of the band have toured, according to the music website Discogs.

Source: Eunice Alpasan/dailyillini.com

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While every Beatles show after 1963 was something of a circus, nothing compared to the band’s ’66 tour. By then, the Fab Four were so popular they were traveling around in the back of an armored van. And it turned out they needed that level of protection.

After a violent scene at the airport in the Philippines and threats from the Ku Klux Klan in America’s South, the band’s security detail more than had their hands full. Meanwhile, the quality of a Beatles live performance had plummeted. In the words of John Lennon, it was “a freak show.”

Ringo couldn’t hear the other three playing (and vice versa). And it’s doubtful fans could hear any music above the screaming girls. Practically speaking, a Beatles tour had become impossible.

However, that wasn’t the only reason the band gave up on playing in front of fans. Beginning with the Revolver album, the music itself represented a real challenge when it came to live performances.

Source: cheatsheet.com

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When Beatles fans got their hands on Revolver (1966), they found what many considered a pleasant surprise: three songs by George Harrison. On top of the blistering “Taxman,” George delivered the sitar-infused “Love You To” and the grooving “I Want to Tell You.”

Meanwhile, he’d worked his tail off to get a backwards guitar solo down for John Lennon’s “I’m Only Sleeping.” In fact, George obsessed so much over that track he drove the studio engineers crazy. All in all, you could call it a creative peak for him to that point.

After the band finished Revolver and embarked on its final, maddening tour, the Beatles took a much-deserved holiday. George, along with his wife Pattie, headed off to India for six weeks.

Not long after their return, the band began the nearly five months of work on what became Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. But this time around, fans only got one George Harrison song/. It marked one of his low points with The Beatles.

Source: cheatsheet.com

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Over the years, Paul McCartney added the occasional odd lyric to his Beatles songs. In “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” a song his bandmates genuinely hated, Paul sang about the character Joan studying “pataphysical.” That was a reference to the work of French writer Alfred Jarry and pataphysics.

In “Penny Lane,” the classic song from Magical Mystery Tour, Paul sang about “finger pie.” He said that raunchy lyric was slipped in for the guys of Liverpool to enjoy. (A “four of fish” was apparently a reference to the local cuisine and its prices.)

Many listeners misheard the “finger pie” line (and would have missed the reference anyway). However, another line in “Penny Lane” ended up being misquoted countless times since the track’s 1967 release.

Source: cheatsheet.com

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When you're a living legend like Paul McCartney, your discography is a lengthy one, so it goes without saying that the former Beatles bandmate doesn't remember all of his material.

In his new interview with Today, McCartney confessed to Al Roker that it's hard to remember all of his hits after so many years in the game. "Yeah, I have to relearn everything," the 77-year-old musician admitted during the discussion. "I've written an awful lot, so you can't retain them all. We go into rehearsal, and I learn them. 'Oh yeah, that's how it goes.'"

McCartney, who recently wrapped up his "Freshen Up Tour," went on to admit that he's even occasionally surprised by how good some of the material is when he relearns it. "I really do, you know. That's one of the joys of doing some of the old songs. And you say, 'Oh, that's clever. I wouldn't have done that,'" he recalled.

Source: iheart.com

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By the end of 1965, The Beatles seemed like a completely different band than the one that took America by storm singing “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Instead of hand-holding, John Lennon was writing songs like “Nowhere Man” and taking trips down memory lane with “In My Life.”

Along with the new subject matter, the band took a wholly new approach to recording their albums. George Harrison had taken up the sitar and debuted it on John’s classic “Norwegian Wood.” Meanwhile, John had all sorts of tricks for “Girl,” another brilliant tune from Rubber Soul.

On that track, John recorded heavy breathing with the assistance of a compressor in the studio. This being the first Beatles album with the band members as “fully fledged potheads,” many take the inhaling sound as a drug reference.

Source: cheatsheet.com

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Scott Freiman has been “deconstructing the Beatles” since 2017; the Tallahassee Film Society will be screening the latest installment in Freiman’s film lecture series this weekend.

The program is in two parts, one focusing on “side one” of the Beatles’ album Abbey Road, the other on the more experimental “side two,” which includes an extended song suite, often called the “Abbey Road” medley, that encompasses most of the album side.

If you’re a Beatles fan, you’ll want to go to Railroad square this weekend. If you’re merely Beatles curious, it’s an excellent and unintimidating place to start. Freiman’s immense knowledge of Beatles lore is balanced by a passion to share what he knows about the band with others.

Ignore the title; Freiman’s Beatles films are no daunting “deconstruction” of the band or its music. The focus is rather on how the Beatles, their record producer George Martin, and a talented crew of recording engineers at EMI studios carefully constructed the sounds that you hear on Beatles records. Freiman’s "Deconstructing the Beatles" series consists of his well-paced, intellectuall details

While The Beatles began experimenting with new instruments and songwriting styles in 1965, they also started innovating in the recording studio. From Rubber Soul on, producer George Martin and the record label’s engineers had their hands full keeping up.

John Lennon in particular baffled engineers with ideas for new sounds. On “I’m Only Sleeping,” John’s classic song from Revolver, the track featured a backwards solo by George Harrison that drove everyone in the studio nuts to record.

By then, John was already warmed up. When the Revolver sessions began, the band tackled “Tomorrow Never Knows” right away. For that tune, John wanted his voice “to sound like the Dalai Lama chanting from a mountaintop.”

Source: cheatsheet.com

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According to Paul McCartney, there's nothing like writing songs — even though he may not remember how all of them go.

The Beatles icon told Al Roker on the "Today" show how he keeps track of all his hits and what's kept him in music all these years.

The 77-year-old admitted that when you've written as many songs as he has it's impossible to remember them all.

"Is it true that sometimes you have to relearn the older stuff?" Roker asked.

"Yeah, I have to relearn everything," McCartney said. "I've written an awful lot, so you can't retain them all. We go into rehearsal, and I learn them. 'Oh yeah, that's how it goes.' "

McCartney added his own songs often surprise him. "Sometimes when you're relearning them, do you kind of look and go, 'You know, this is pretty good?' " Roker wondered.

"I do," McCartney said. "I really do, you know. That's one of the joys of doing some of the old songs. And you say, 'Oh, that's clever. I wouldn't have done that.' "

Source: Charles Trepany/usatoday.com

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Though George Harrison died over 10 years ago, he is a long way away from ever being forgotten. The lead guitarist for The Beatles was one of the most iconic musicians of his time. Though a lot of his life has been put in front of the public eye, there are some things that even the biggest Beatles fans don’t know about him. Here, PPcorn present a list of 15 facts you probably didn’t know about George Harrison.
Number Fifteen: He Was Part of The Quarry Men

Before there were The Beatles, there were The Quarry Men. They made a record in the summer of 1958 that featured Harrison, and the record cost 17 and sixpence to create.
Number Fourteen: He Was Involved in the First Recording the Beatles Made

The very first song the Beatles recorded was “Cry for a Shadow.” Which was an instrumental song Harrison did with John Lennon.
Number Thirteen: He Was Deported From Germany

When the Hamburg police realized that Harrison had entered the country under the age of 18, they deported him. The rest of the Beatles stayed to perform, although they were all later deported as well.

Source: ppcorn.com

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The new Danny Boyle movie, Yesterday, is a charming if lightweight picture. But before Richard Curtis’s script devolves to an all-too-predictable rom-com finish, the film does raise an interesting question: If the Beatles’ songs suddenly appeared without publicity, history or legend in today’s very different musical climate, would the public still respond to them? Would listeners embrace the music even if it arrived in inferior versions from Jack Malik, a struggling singer-songwriter from the smallest coffeehouses in Suffolk?

Yesterday offers a resounding yes to that question, and while I think the filmmakers overstate the case—after all, it took the Beatles several years of failed auditions before they gained any traction—the songs are still great in any context.

The movie posits that during a 12-second, worldwide power outage, all traces of the Beatles have vanished from stores, libraries, the internet and people’s minds. Only three people in the world remember them at all, and Jack is one of them. But as he tries to recreate the songs to perform them in public, he has no recordings or sheet music to consult, so he has to rack his brain to recall the words and chords.

If you read about Paul McCartney in the studio with The Beatles, writers often focus on his professionalism and, at times, perfectionism to a fault. While recording Abbey Road, Paul drove the entire band nuts recording “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” It simply took too long.

For Paul, it was just another day (or three) at the office. From the books published on The Beatles, he seems like the band member who always felt comfortable in the studio. Whatever it took to get a track right, Paul was ready to do it — even if it pissed off John Lennon to no end.

At the Beatles’ first recording sessions in 1962, Paul arrived confident and ready to play. After some discussion, producer George Martin allowed them to try out their own composition, “Love Me Do.” But he asked for a last-minute change.

Rather than keep John singing and playing harmonica (which cut off some lyrics), Martin asked Paul to sing the chorus on his own. Suddenly, Paul realized he’d be singing the break without any music behind him. The idea terrified him.

Source: cheatsheet.com

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Ringo Starr was in search of a reset, after devolving into alcoholism in the '80s. He found it within the friendly confines of a group. Only this time, rather than the Beatles, it was an All-Starr Band.

"I was afraid at the beginning," Starr told Rolling Stone in 2019. "[I thought,] 'I don't know how you do anything if you're not drunk.' That's where I ended up: I couldn't play sober, but I also couldn't play as a drunk. So, when I did end up in rehab, it was like a light went on and said, 'You're a musician; you play good.'"

Still, at this point, Starr hadn't put out an album since 1983's Old Wave, and by then he'd already lost his recording contract. He hadn't reached the Top 40 since 1976's Ringo's Rotogravure. Along the way, he'd lost his career, followed by his confidence.

Then David Fishof reached out. A one-time sports agent, Fishof had recently emerged as a tour producer with a hot hand. He imagined a series of guest-laden dates featuring Starr, in keeping with his recent successes with the Happy Together Tour and the Dirty Dancing trek.

"I wrote a letter, and a few months later I got a call to go over to England and meet with Ringo," Fishof told the Jerusalem Post in 2018. "At that time, details

The Beatles icon Paul McCartney revealed how he felt ripped off after he bought an album believing it was a new Little Richard record, but it was in fact Buck Ram Orchestra album with Little Richard featured on one song. Paul McCartney recently dropped a The Police reunion bombshell.

McCartney told his official website social media team, “I mean many people may not know this, but I love to give value for money. That was sort of what George Martin always used to say and talk about: it’s good value for money. That sort of hit a nerve with us because we remembered, particularly when we were first recording in Abbey Road. We remembered recently having been the people who had bought the records, not made them. And if you ever got cheated, you hated the artist or the label.

I once bought a record by Little Richard and I thought, ‘Wow! A new record by Little Richard!’

Source: Brett Buchanan/alternativenation.net

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Once The Beatles were established, No. 1 hits became routine. By the end of the band’s epic, six-year run on the Billboard charts, the Fab Four topped the pack 20 times with hit singles. That was more than Elvis and will likely stand as an unbeatable record.

But they had to claw their way to the top first. The journey included trips to Hamburg to hone their style and residencies in Liverpool spots like the Cavern Club. However, a band can’t go anywhere without a hit record.

As of late 1962, The Beatles still hadn’t even released a record (let alone scored a hit). However, when the band booked a record date with EMI in London, they made sure to seize the opportunity.

Instead of going with a performance of another songwriter’s tune, John Lennon and Paul McCartney pushed to record one of their own compositions. The track was “Love Me Do,” and it broke the top 20 on the UK charts.

Source: cheatsheet.com

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