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Beatles News
Paul McCartney has had a decade spanning career as a solo artist which would be the envy of almost any musician you care to mention. The artists who can claim his success or longetvity are few and far between. At the same time, he forever lives in the shadow of his achievements with The Beatles half a century ago.
His self title debut solo album featured the eternal classic Maybe I’m Amazed but was otherwise homemade and low key by design. For all its charm it felt like a minor work compared to the grand statements of John Lennon and George Harrison’s solo debuts.
He regained popular acclaim in The Seventies with Wings But was seldom a critics’ favourite and there’s a pervading opinion that he was never as good without his old friends from Liverpool.
Source: whatculture.com
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By the time The Beatles settled in to write the songs that would make up their legendary 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s songwriting partnership had drastically transformed from the early days when they would write songs face-to-face, trading lines. It was now far more common for one of them to write a song on his own and then bring it in so the other could edit, criticize, and maybe embellish upon the raw material provided.
In the case of Pepper’s monumental closing track “A Day In The Life,” the collaboration came from the melding of seemingly disparate parts of songs that the two had written separately. As Lennon told Playboy shortly before his death in 1980, “I was reading the paper one day and noticed two stories. One was about the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car. That was the main headline story. He died in London in a car crash. On the next page was a story about four thousand potholes in the streets of Blackburn, Lancashire, that needed to be filled.”
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
Mary, Sylvia, Val and Pam performed at the same venues as the Rolling Stones and The Kinks and had equal billing with Chuck Berry in Hamburg, where they were known as “the female Beatles”. Which must have really annoyed John Lennon. When he met them backstage at the Cavern, he told them: “Girls don’t play guitars.” They turned down the Fab Four’s manager Brian Epstein, hung out with Jimi Hendrix and The Four Tops, helped The Kinks record their first No1 and guitarist Pam had a fling with Mick Jagger. But Mary McGlory, Sylvia Saunders, Valerie Gell and Pamela Birch never became household names like their male contemporaries.
Now, more than 50 years on, the incredible story of the four teenagers and their part in the Merseybeat revolution is finally being told in a new musical, Girls Don’t Play Guitars, a whirlwind tour through the band’s five years together, created with the help of its two surviving members, drummer Sylvia, 72, and bassist Mary, 73, pictured right.
Source: Kat Hopps/express.co.uk
By 1965, The Beatles had written some great songs. They’d put “Please Please Me,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” and the Paul McCartney masterpiece “Yesterday” on vinyl and sold millions of records around the world.
But as catchy as those tunes (and their song titles) were, the band had yet to name an album with any sort of creativity. Of their first five releases, the title either came from a song or film name (e.g., Help!) or had a generic name (e.g., With The Beatles).
Prior to the release of Rubber Soul (December ’65), it was clear the band could do better. The record, which George Harrison called his favorite with The Beatles, featured classic tracks like “In My Life” and “Nowhere Man.”
In a nod to the psychedelic age, the band used an stretched-out photo and bubble lettering for the album cover. And for the title, they used a phrase Paul heard an American bluesman had used to describe Mick Jagger.
Source: cheatsheet.com
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Dressed exactly as John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison once did, the Mersey Beatles, a tribute band, comes out onto the stage and immediately transports the Buskirk-Chumley Theater’s audience back to the 1960s.
Beatlemania and the classic moptop hair, returned.
On the evening of Oct. 16, the auditorium of the BCT lit up with sing-alongs, dancing and laughter as the Beatles cover band, the Mersey Beatles, performed the entirety of the Beatles’ eleventh studio album, “Abbey Road,” as well as a set of the Beatles’ greatest hits.
Audience attendee and Bloomington resident Michael Esposito was excited.
“My favorite song from the Beatles is ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps,’” Esposito said before the show began. “It reminds me of my family growing up. It’s very nostalgic.”
Source: Greer Ramsey-White/idsnews.com
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Former LIFE photographer Bob Gomel captured some of the earliest days of Beatlemania. Many of his photos were never shared with the public, until now. VPC
If it were not for the Isley Brothers, the Beatles would still be Liverpool.
That's the word from Paul McCartney, who told guitar legend Ernie Isley of the debt the Fab Four owed the Isleys when they met at the Apollo in the Hamptons benefit in 2012. The Beatles, of course, covered the Isley Brothers hits “Twist and Shout” and “Shout” early in their career.
The Isleys had just finished performing “Shout” at the benefit.
“We came back off the stage, taking selfies and signing autographs,” Ernie Isley said. “My wife Tracy said to me Paul McCartney’s over there and I said, 'Where?' She points and he was about four tables away. I squeezed through the tables, tapped him on his shoulder and he stood up at his full height and gave me bear hug that cut my wind off.
Source: Chris Jordan, Asbury Park Press details
When The Beatles described how hectic their lives were from 1963-67, they weren’t exaggerating. Over that time, the band released nine albums of original songs. On top of that, they owed the record company between two and four singles (separate from the records) each year.
Meanwhile, they mixed in two feature films, one poorly received TV movie, and countless concerts and appearances. Indeed, you might be running from fans and snapping at people, too, if you had that type of schedule.
Once the band quit touring for good, they had more time to spend in the studio to lay down whatever sort of tracks they liked. And they used as much of it as they could (over four months) to make their first album as purely studio musicians: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Source: cheatsheet.com
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I debated if I should be a bit more contemporary when I chose my first pop culture topic. But, as they say, you must first know your past before you can understand your future.
There was never a band like The Beatles when they swept into America in 1964. Four young men named John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr changed the world.
And, really, there would never be one like them again. Because once Beatlemania hit, nothing really could ever be as frenzied. Their fans were so loud during concerts they said they actually got worse as a band because they couldn’t hear themselves perform. It’s the main reason they stopped touring and stopped performing live.
September marked 50 years of when The Beatles released “Abbey Road” and after all these years the album has managed to reach the Top 3 in the Billboard Chart of Top 200 in the U.S., and hit No. 1 again in the U.K.
Source: Crystal Schelle /fredericknewspost.com
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The Beatles singer/guitarist John Lennon’s one of the rarest photos with Yoko Ono has been shared on Lennon’s official Instagram page.
The photo was taken by Kishin Shinoyama, and the page has revealed a rare statement of Shinoyama as a caption of that post. The statement showed some observations about the lifestyle of Ono and Lennon after The Beatles’ split.
Here’s the statement:
“I think that photography should capture a moment at the end of every second, so to speak. Every moment ends instantly, it becomes the past, you know? Photography is one of the tools you can use to record a moment. For any type of work, I’ve never changed my approach. I take photos of everything I see, without letting anything pass by. ⠀
⠀
Source: Feyyaz Ustaer/metalheadzone.com
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What was The Beatles’ greatest asset as a band? It’s hard to pick one thing, but if we had to choose it would be the way the band members’ taste in music complemented that of the others.
John Lennon was a rock ‘n’ roller first and foremost; George Harrison was into Indian music and folk rock; Paul McCartney was the most into pop standards; and Ringo Starr loved country and western. And you could call producer George Martin the essential fifth man.
Looking back at their Beatles careers, each member of the group named a different album as their favorite. For George, Rubber Soul stood out from the pack for its quality songwriting and special moment in time. When pressed on his favorite, Paul chose Sgt. Pepper’s.
John and Ringo proved harder to pin down. Though he couldn’t endorse any album in its entirety, John spoke most highly of The White Album. As for Ringo, he couldn’t choose an entire album, either. But he came awful close.
Source: cheatsheet.com
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All three are the names of songs made famous by the Beatles and on Sunday, the lyrics of those songs and more became the background for a real-life proverb.
St. Peter’s By the Sea Episcopal Church hosted a special mass Sunday evening using the music of the Beatles as inspiration to spread a message of hope, love, and community.
Hundreds filled St. Peter's By the Sea Sunday evening for a special mass celebrating the message behind the music of the Beatles.
lassic Beatles songs rang out for over an hour in the downtown Gulfport church. While mixing pop bands and religion might not be considered common, it is something that St. Peters has done a couple of times, much to the pleasure of those who attend.
Rev. Patrick Sanders has fused his love of music and God before, hosting a Grateful Dead mass and a Beach Boys mass.
“I love music and I love the church," explained Sanders. “So it is a really amazing thing for me to be able to put those two parts of my life together in a moment, and I think all our musicians feel that way, both the choir, the kids that sang tonight, and all the different people who participated.”
Source: Tristan Ruppert/wlox.com
Like many famous artists of the twentieth century, the Beatles occasionally acted in films. The group made five movies together before they disbanded in the 1970s. That wasn’t enough for the movie-going public. Here are a few of the overlooked films inspired by the Beatles.Whether it’s fair or not, Ringo Starr has a reputation for being the least illustrious of the Beatles. His film career certainly hasn’t helped things. Most infamously, Ringo played the title character in the flop comedy Caveman. While the film Ringo isn’t as infamous as Caveman, it doesn’t have a very good reputation.
The film stars Ringo as a fictionalized version of himself. In a dual role, he also plays his brother, “Ognir Rrats” (spell it backwards). The film is a loose adaptation of Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper and features appearances from a number of well-known actors, including Carrie Fisher, Vincent Price, and Art Carney.
Source: cheatsheet.com
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Fort Worth man remembers the weekend the Beatles spent at his family's ranch. Reed Pigman was 14 years old when the Beatles visited his family's ranch in Missouri for a weekend during their 1964 U.S. tour.
Hardly anyone asks Reed Pigman anymore about the time the Beatles came over to his house. But then again, hardly anyone in 1964 knew they visited his family’s ranch in the Missouri Ozarks.
In a thick file in his office at Meacham Airport in Fort Worth, Texas, Pigman keeps snapshots of a top-secret charter airline side trip that remains mostly unknown to Beatles fans.
Pigman was 14. It was 55 years ago, after the Beatles’ raucous concert at the Dallas Convention Center on Sept. 18, 1964.
Before that show, the Fab Four were supposed to have a day off. But Charlie O. Finley, then owner of the Kansas City A’s baseball team, paid Beatles manager Brian Epstein an unheard of sum — $150,000 — to add a Sept. 17 concert at the old Municipal Stadium.
The Beatles needed a break.
Source: Amanda McCoy/kansascity.com
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When people ask Paul McCartney about his favorite songs and albums by The Beatles, he’s got a lot to choose from. You could start with Rubber Soul (1965), a record that inspired the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds — and one George Harrison held up as his own favorite with the Fab Four.
From there, it doesn’t get any easier. Revolver, released in 1966, has always been the winner for many fans and features some of Paul’s best work. If you’re not knocked out by “Cry For No One,” you have to be by “Here, There and Everywhere,” the only song John Lennon ever complimented Paul on.
Indeed, looking back in the 1980s, Paul said that brilliant Revolver ballad might be his favorite song (with “Yesterday” as a close second). But albums are tougher to choose, especially given the deep bench of late ’60s Beatles recordings.
But in an interview with Bob Costas in the early ’90s, Paul did settle on a favorite. Were he forced to choose, he said he’d go with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Source: cheatsheet.com
Mustaches have gone in and out of style for centuries. Some consider them powerful and masculine, while others consider them downright silly. Today we even have a fake mustache trend where people joke about the look by holding up paper cutouts of a mustache or draw a mustache shape on their inner finger to hold up to their face.
We love to laugh about a character twisting his mustache “handlebars,” but this isn’t a new phenomenon.
At one time the Beatles wore mustaches and even made it into a joke by providing mustache cutouts to their fans. However, the 60s trend almost didn’t happen. Here’s the story of the accidental reason the Beatles decided to grow a mustache.
Paul McCartney suffered a gruesome accident
It turns out that the hairy upper lip, which became such an iconic Beatle’s look, was all because of a moped accident. In December of 1965, Paul McCartney lost control of his moped and crashed. After smacking his face on the pavement, McCartney left the scene with a split upper lip and a chipped tooth.
Source: cheatsheet.com