Beatles News

When John Lennon went solo, it was nothing the music world could take lightly. That became clear about 10 seconds into “Instant Karma,” a No. 3 single he released while The Beatles were still technically a band.

John’s sound was rawer, more stripped-down, and more pungent than just about everything the Fab Four released. Yet he still gave fans the chance to sing along. “Well, we all shine on,” went the chorus. “Like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.” People loved it.

If you were John’s manager (imagine that), you’d have tried to persuade him to keep the same approach for his first solo album. After all, Paul McCartney had a No. 1 hit by playing it safe with McCartney. That album arrived just as The Beatles announced they were disbanding.

Source: cheatsheet.com

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Garth Brooks is obsessed with bigness. Specifically, big numbers. As competitive as anyone in the music biz, the country megastar wants to be No. 1 in as many categories as he can. By some measures, he even tops the Beatles.

Not bad for someone who, in the prime of his career, took the better part of 10 years off from recording and touring to raise his three daughters.

Now, on his first all-stadium tour, the 57-year-old Oklahoman is poised to set another record — for total attendance at a Twin Cities stadium concert engagement — May 3-4 at U.S. Bank Stadium. In all, 140,000 fans are expected to see these sold-out shows, thank in part to Brooks' decision to sell seats behind the stage.

Remember, this is the man who in 1991 generated a staggering 160,000 ticket requests for a single concert at the Minnesota State Fair, and drew more than 200,000 for his 11-show run at Target Center in 2014, and 160,000-plus for his nine shows there in 1998.

Source: Jon Bream/startribune.com

Here is a look at some of his Garth-gantuan numbers<<<

Paul McCartney and John Lennon almost quit music before The Beatles made it big, as they considered going into another line of work. Lennon’s sister Julia Baird told DailyMailTV that her family wanted to see Lennon move on with another job.

“John and Paul were lucky, because if it had gone on much longer without getting a break I don’t know what would have happened.

Mimi (John’s aunt) famously said to John: ‘The guitar is all very well John but you will never make a living out of it.’

That was the worry for all the families. I was worried about him dropping out of art college. Something inside us insisted that they had to stick with it. They wanted to make it and they were absolutely determined.”

Source: Brett Buchanan/alternativenation.net

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When you read about The Beatles, there’s always an element of “it depends who you ask.” During the making of The White Album, the band’s recording engineer remembered a battle between John Lennon and Paul McCartney nearly becoming a fistfight.

For Paul, the memory mostly involved getting the tune (“Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da“) to sound just right. In this case, it’s not hard to imagine both stories being true. Stories about the band members’ personal lives also have multiple versions from the parties involved.

Take the period from mid-1973 until early ’75 that John described as his “lost weekend.” During that stretch, John partied hard, had an affair with a young assistant, and left Yoko Ono to spend long stretches in Los Angeles with his new girlfriend.

To most people, that sounds like a haunted man on a ruinous binge with zero upside. However, for John, Yoko, and others present, there was much more to the story.

Source: cheatsheet.com

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Paul McCartney will treat fans to an expanded version of his chart-topping 2018 studio album, Egypt Station. Dubbed the "Explorer's Edition," it'll arrive in stores on May 17.

The deluxe release will feature the original Egypt Station album and a bonus disc offering extra studio recordings, including an extended version of "Who Cares" and the surprise single "Get Enough," as well as live performances from the special shows McCartney played last year in London, New York City and his hometown of Liverpool, U.K.

Egypt Station: Explorer's Edition will be available as a two-CD set, a three-LP vinyl package and digitally.

All of the bonus tracks also are available in McCartney's previously announced limited-edition Egypt Station: Traveller's Edition luxury box set, which is completely sold out.

Egypt Station: Explorer's Edition, which can be pre-ordered now, will arrive in advance of the 2019 North American leg of Sir Paul's Freshen Up world tour, which kicks off May 23 in New Orleans.

Source: ABC News Radio

Here's the full track list of CD version of the deluxe details

Headlining the event on April 26 is Edgar Winter, a long-time member of Ringo Star’s All-Star Band. The 1970s rock star’s hits include ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘Free Ride.’

The last year or so have been very, very Fab Four-centric for Daniel Hartwell.

“I not only met a Beatle, but then I got to meet him and give him the book I wrote about a Beatle!” says the Delray Beach music promoter, of getting a once-in-a-lifetime audience with Ringo Starr backstage at a recent concert and presenting him with “Saint John Lennon,” the mystical novel Hartwell released in 2018.

And now, he’s inviting worldwide fans of the groundbreaking band from Liverpool right here to Delray for a weekend-long celebration of everything Beatles.

“It’s four fab days of fun, sun, love and music,” Hartwell says of the first annual Beatles on The Beach festival. Special guests include legendary musician Edgar Winter and Beatles tribute artists from Japan, Argentina, Norway and more, performing at several downtown venues including Old School Square.

Source: Leslie Gray Streeter/palmbeachpost.com

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Every music fan in the world can reel off the names of The Beatles. Yet instead of John, Paul, George and Ringo, the Fab Four might well have comprised John, Paul, George… and Hutch.

Johnny Hutchinson, who has died at the age of 79, was the drummer with the Liverpudlian group The Big Three who rivalled The Beatles for popularity before the Mersey sound became a national and international phenomenon in the early Sixties. Known to friends and fans as Hutch, or Johnny Hutch, he filled in on drums behind Lennon, McCartney and Harrison in both 1960 and 1962. Later he claimed he was offered the opportunity to become Pete Best’s successor in the soon-to-be-world-conquering mop-tops before Ringo Starr was given the job.

Hutchinson was born in Valletta, Malta, to an army family but was raised in Toxteth, Liverpool, where he trained as an upholsterer on leaving school. After dabbling with the clarinet, he learned to play the drums and in 1959 was recruited by rock ‘n’ rollers Cass and the Casanovas. With bandmates Adrian Barber (later a producer for Atlantic Records) and Johnny Gustafson (a future member of Roxy Music) he formed The Big Three in 1961 with the intention of playing rhythm and blues. details

The May 9 event in Liverpool, England, features nearly 300 items, including Ringo Starr's wristwatch, a drawing by George Harrison, four of Paul McCartney's signed bass guitars and a rare 'Yesterday and Today' album owned by John Lennon.

Martin Nolan has been thinking a lot about the Wi-Fi in northwestern England lately, with good reason: On May 9, Julien’s Auctions will present “Music Icons: The Beatles in Liverpool,” the first time a sale of the Fab Four’s memorabilia will take place in the town best known for birthing one of the world’s greatest bands.

“There’s a backup plan of the backup plan,” says Nolan, executive director of Julien’s Auctions, of the technology required for a sale that largely will take place online. “We’ve had experts in Liverpool getting ready for some time, because a significant portion of the auction will be sold either on the phone or via online bidding in real time. And the interest is truly global: We’ve had inquiries from Japan, Australia, China, North America and everywhere in between, because The Beatles are just as relevant as they were 50 years ago.”

Source: Laurie Brookins/hollywoodreporter. details

By early 1970, The Beatles were on their last legs as a band. The previous September, during a particularly hostile meeting, John Lennon had told the other members of the group that he was leaving.

That didn’t strike anyone present as a big surprise. After all, a disgruntled George Harrison had quit the group for a while during the Let It Be sessions earlier in ’69. Meanwhile, everyone in the band (Ringo included) had solo projects going.

But when John released the “Instant Karma” single in February ’70, you could picture what his solo career would be like. It sold a million copies, outperforming all other Beatles solo efforts to that point. In the coming decade, he’d release nine top 10 singles and three No. 1 albums.

“Instant Karma,” which peaked at No. 3 (while “Let It Be” sat one place ahead), hinted of the success John would have. Here were his biggest hits after leaving The Beatles.

Source: cheatsheet.com

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 He was the first to guide an X-rated film to the top of the Oscar heap, introduced the Beatles to Hollywood with “Hard Day’s Night” and “Help!” and convinced a reluctant Ian Fleming that, yes, James Bond might fare pretty well as a cinematic character.

A third-generation movie man, David V. Picker was a studio chief at United Artists, Columbia and Paramount in a prestigious run of box-office successes including “Last Tango in Paris” and “Ordinary People.”

Despite the accolades and the Oscars, Picker was quick to remind admirers that his career would likely have turned out the same even if he’d rejected the movies he helped bring to the movie houses of America and greenlighted those he’d kicked to the curb.

“My career would have probably turned out the same,” he wrote in “Musts, Maybes and Nevers: A Book About the Movies,” his 2013 memoir.

Source: Steve Marble/latimes.com

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Nowhere Boy, the 2009 biopic that starred Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the young John Lennon, is being developed for the stage.

Producers Brian Lee and Dayna Bloom of AF Creative Media and Robyn Goodman and Josh Fielder of Aged in Wood announced the project on Monday.

The musical play is inspired by the film about Lennon's adolescence in Liverpool and his complex relationships with his aunt, Mimi Smith, who raised him, and his mother, Julia Lennon, who abandoned him as a child. The story traces his initial steps into the music world and the creation in 1956 of his first band, The Quarrymen, which was joined a year later by Paul McCartney.

The feature directing debut of photographer and video artist-turned-filmmaker Sam Taylor-Johnson (then Sam Taylor-Wood), the movie was written by Matt Greenhalgh, who also wrote the 2007 music film Control, about Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

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By 1969, The Beatles had much more than Yoko Ono to worry about. The previous year, John Lennon and Paul McCartney nearly got into a fistfight while recording The White Album.

Lennon’s disdain for “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” was the occasion for that episode in what had become a fractured relationship. But George Harrison had also nearly fought John over some comments he made about the band’s finances in the papers.

Meanwhile, John was insisting Allen Klein take over management for the band. After George and Ringo sided with John in that matter, it pitted all three Beatles against Paul. In other words, it was only a matter of time before the band parted ways.

That left George with something to prove as a solo artist. The years of taking a backseat to the Lennon-McCartney empire were done. Once he scored his first hit album, there was basically no way The Beatles could get back together.

Source: cheatsheet.com

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Late in the brilliant run of The Beatles, the band members had pretty much had it with one another. Geoff Emerick, the recording engineer on The White Album, told the story of John Lennon getting driven mad by the endless takes needed to produce “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.”

By then, John was absolutely fed up with what he called Paul McCartney’s “granny music.” Once John went solo, he told the world how he felt on “How Do You Sleep?” In that takedown tune, he describes Paul’s solo work as “Muzak to my ears” while reeling off other insults.

Still, the band found ways to make Abbey Road and Let It Be, The Beatles’ final studio releases. Despite the animosity and regular confrontations over business matters, the four band members still had the sort of chemistry that allowed them to take the world by storm in ’64.

Source: cheatsheet.com

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It took a lot more than Yoko Ono to break up The Beatles. In fact, you can argue the show could have gone on had Paul McCartney agreed to the manager (i.e., Allen Klein) his three bandmates decided they wanted for the group. But there was almost no chance he would.

Paul’s pick for manager was the father of Linda Eastman, his future wife. So the Fab Four had serious business disagreements by early 1969. And they never ended up settling them.

After more rounds of bickering, recording, and releasing hit albums, The Beatles announced they’d parted ways in April 1970. Soon enough, you could hear John Lennon knocking around his old songwriting partner in song. (George Harrison and Ringo would get in some shots as well.)

But that doesn’t mean they didn’t miss each other. In fact, John went on the record several times talking about that special thing The Beatles had when they were in a recording studio together.

Source: cheatsheet.com

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When most people picture John Lennon and Yoko Ono, they imagine the pair ensconced in bed together as part of their “Bed-In for Peace” during the Vietnam war. Or they envision the couple’s iconic wedding picture where they stand together in matching white outfits looking every bit the part of young, in love, and full of hope for the future.

There’s no denying that John Lennon and Yoko Ono had an intense and epic love story. But their union was also plagued by controversy stemming from the opinions of friends, family members, and strangers alike. Maybe love isn’t enough to conquer all.

Why was Lennon’s and Ono’s romance so controversial? There are several reasons.

Source: cheatsheet.com

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