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Beatles News
Staff at the British Heart Foundation (BHF) were stunned when a plastic bag left at their local fundraising store included a super-rare demo cut of The Beatles first ever single, "Love Me Do"
They say charity begins at home, but for an anonymous resident of sleepy Midhurst in West Sussex, England, it started with their record collection. Or, to be more precise, their decision to donate 25 of their old records to a nearby charity.
Staff at the British Heart Foundationthis link opens in a new tab (BHF) were stunned to find a plastic bag left at their local fundraising store included an ultra rare demo cut of The Beatles first ever single “Love Me Do.”
Source: Phil Boucher/people.com
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The passionate letter, which was written in 1971, is currently up for auction in Boston
A letter written by John Lennon in 1971, in which he details his anger with his record label and the music industry at large over the ‘Two Virgins’ album he released with Yoko Ono, will be sold at an auction in the US tomorrow.
The letter has recently resurfaced and been put up for auction, with the sale – which is being conducted by RR Auctions in Boston, Massachusetts – expected to reach a price of £15,000 when bidding ends tomorrow (March 14).
Addressed to “Martin George of Rock Ink”, the auction house cites “noted Beatles expert” Perry Cox in affirming that the letter was sent to the late Beatles producer George Martin. However, author Mark Lewisohn has subsequently told The Times that he believes that Lennon was actually responding to the journalist Martin George, who wrote for “a magazine or a weekly underground newspaper called Ink“.
Source: Sam Moore /nme.com
SATURDAY 4 MAY 2019
LONDON PALLADIUM
On May 4th at London’s Palladium, The Analogues will bring to life one of music’s most cherished and expansive LPs, The White Album – playing the 30-track record in its entirety, from the very first to very last note.
It takes a special kind of obsessive to perfectly recreate on stage an album never made to be performed live. But The Analogues are no ordinary Beatles fans. They are the type to instigate a viral campaign to help locate the exact bell sound from “Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Money", listening to every submission on the phone (they eventually found it in a Maritime store) – or spend months trying to track down a real harpsichord, even if it only appears on one Beatles track (“Piggies”).
The Beatles stopped performing in 1966, fed up of the constant hysteria at their shows that began to inhibit rather than propel the band forward. This decision meant albums such as 1968’s The White Album were driven by studio experimentation and, while they changed music, fans were never able to experience the records live. Indeed, many thought it could not be done.
Fifty years on details
If you look into The Beatles’ album sales, you find one unbeatable record after another. It all starts with cumulative sales. At 183 million units sold, no recording artist comes close to the Fab Four.
The band also dominated the Billboard charts unlike any other artist selling records in America. Over the years, the band posted 20 No. 1 hit singles on the Billboard Hot 100. Not even Elvis could match that total.
That brings us to the band’s long-playing (LP) records on the Billboard 200. Once again, The Beatles hold the record for No. 1 albums (19), and no one is close. (Jay-Z has 13.) The figure becomes more amazing when you consider the group only stayed together for seven years.
Source: cheatsheet.com
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Cultural immortality belongs to a very few, a subject that comes up in a pair of documentaries this week devoted to 20th-century icons, John Lennon and Richard Pryor.
The A&E presentation "John and Yoko: Above Us Only Sky" is the more intimate of the two -- a deep dive into the making of Lennon and wife Yoko Ono's "Imagine" album in 1971, which feels like must-see TV for rock fans. Later in the week, Paramount Network will air "I Am Richard Pryor," the latest in a series of "I Am" biographies devoted, frequently, to those who died too soon.
Culled in part from an extensive trove of home video -- including never-before-seen footage shot around Lennon's place in Tittenhurst Park, England -- with up-to-date interviews, "John & Yoko" provides a glimpse of Lennon in his studio/home, interacting not only with his wife but in recording sessions with fellow Beatle George Harrison, guitarist Eric Clapton and producer Phil Spector.
Source: Brian Lowry, CNN
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If Alan White’s résumé was limited to playing drums on John Lennon’s Imagine and George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, it would be pretty impressive. But about two years after appearing on those pivotal Beatles solo records, he was recruited by Yes — then at the peak of their creative powers — to replace the outgoing Bill Bruford. The band has seen a ludicrous amount of lineup changes since that time, but the one constant has been White’s presence behind the drum kit. These days, back issues limit his time onstage with Yes to a handful of songs a night, but he still tours with the band and hopes to play for longer periods of the show after he regains his full strength.
Source: Rolling Stone
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The story of ground-breaking British film studio HandMade Films, which was founded by legendary former Beatle George Harrison and made such films as Monty Python’s Life of Brian, is set to be told in An Accidental Studio, a feature documentary from AMC U.K. for its international networks.
The film will be the first original from AMC U.K. and it will debut on the British channel on 4 May and on AMC channels internationally later in the year. It has never-before-seen interviews with key players including Richard E. Grant, Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin and sets out to capture an extraordinary moment in film history through the eyes of the filmmakers and actors involved, as well as the man who started it all, music legend Harrison, who features in archive interview footage.
Source: Tim Peacock/udiscovermusic.com
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Filmmaker Michael Epstein couldn’t believe his luck when Yoko Ono gave him access to hours of forgotten footage of her life with John Lennon.
The singer and performance artist decided it was time to show fans the home videos shot at the couple’s Tittenhurst Park home in England and in New York in 1970 and 1971, and called in Epstein to sort through it. The result is John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky, which will air on America’s A&E network next week.
The thrilled director is still pinching himself after realizing he had his hands on Lennon’s mythical Clock movie and unseen footage of George Harrison performing with Lennon.
“Yoko realized there was all this material that had been shot that nobody had ever seen,” he tells WENN. “I thought I had seen everything and I thought I knew the story, but I remember seeing this footage for the first time and just being blown away…
Source: canoe.com
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If you ever look at the list of top-selling recording artists, you’re going to get some surprises. For example, the album sales of Jimi Hendrix (23 million units) don’t come close to the numbers posted by, say, the Dixie Chicks (30.5 million).
But once you get to the top 10, things start making sense. That’s where you find names like Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and Michael Jackson. These artists electrified entire generations, and their albums continue to sell at a remarkable clip decades after their release.
Source: cheatsheet.com
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A brand new tour of the Cavern Club is launching next week.
The free tour will allow visitors to take a peek behind the scenes at the famous Mathew Street venue.
For the first time in the club's 62-year history, Beatles fans can enjoy a 45-minute tour ‘behind the curtain’ to see what happens backstage.
Led by guide Dale Roberts, the free tour will run every weekday morning except Wednesdays.
Source: Ellen Kirwin/liverpoolecho.co.uk
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‘Oh f*** off, it’s just a rock album’: What John Lennon said when he was told people would be listening to Imagine '10 years later' is revealed in a new behind-the-scenes documentary
In the summer of 1969, John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono moved to Tittenhurst Park in Ascot, England – away from London and Lennon’s bandmates
The Beatles were on the precipice of breaking up and would have their last photo shoot at Tittenhurst, which was where Lennon started to record Imagine in 1971
A new Biography documentary, ‘John and Yoko: Above Us Only Sky,’ which premieres on A&E Network on March 11, looks at the making of the famous album
Source: dailymail.co.uk
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The story of groundbreaking British film studio HandMade Films, which was founded by former Beatle George Harrison and made such films as “Monty Python’s Life of Brian,” will be told in “An Accidental Studio,” a feature documentary from AMC U.K. for its international networks.
The film will be the first original from AMC U.K. and bow on the British channel on May 4 and on AMC channels internationally later in the year. It has never-before-seen interviews with key players, and sets out to capture an extraordinary moment in film history through the eyes of the filmmakers and actors involved, as well as the man who started it all, music legend Harrison, who features in archive interview footage.
HandMade dominated the British movie scene with its ethos of making and releasing maverick films that everyone else had rejected, including “The Long Good Friday,” “Time Bandits,” and “Withnail and I.”
Source: Stewart Clarke/variety.com
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The band officially parted ways in 1970 and rumors still abound regarding Yoko Ono’s influence on the split.
In Beatles lore, no person is as divisive or controversial as Yoko Ono, the lover and eventual bride of John Lennon, who arrived on the scene as the band was facing its toughest hardships. It was a time of deep loss, psychological questioning and bitter in-fighting over leadership and business that would ultimately end in the band’s split.
But was Ono to blame for the breakup of The Beatles?
The Beatles were already 'breaking up' before Ono came around
Regardless of public record in the intervening decades since the group went their separate ways, many fans still lay the blame at Ono’s feet. Addressing the rumor directly in 2012, Paul McCartney told British interviewer David Frost that Ono "certainly didn’t break the group up, the group was breaking up."
Source: biography.com
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A sketch of a UFO by John Lennon is up for auction, along with his sci-fi magazines and a lock of his hair.
The Beatles singer-songwriter was reportedly fascinated by alien life, even writing about them, and was believed to have had 'UFO experiences'.
He drew the rarely seen sketch of a flying saucer in the 1950s or 1960s, then years later saw a UFO outside his apartment window traveling over New York's East River on August 23, 1974.
According to his lover May Pang, who was Yoko Ono's secretary, the star spotted a flying saucer - screaming at the window 'wait, take me with you' to what he believed was a UFO.
Source: Daily Mail
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Every musician borrows, and The Beatles were no different. They were the first to acknowledge that to anyone who asked.
Paul McCartney once said the band would simply “pinch as much from other people as they would pinch from us.” However, few no bands were ever as successful as The Beatles.
In other words, if you had a legitimate copyright claim against the Fab Four, you had had thousands of reasons to lawyer up and try to sue. That’s how George Harrison got caught “pinching” another song on “My Sweet Lord,” a solo track he recorded later.
Since that song was one of Harrison’s No. 1 hits, he ended up paying out a six-figure settlement. By then, John Lennon had run into his own share of legal trouble over a Chuck Berry song. Lawyers for The Beatles realized right away that Berry’s publisher had a case.
Source: cheatsheet.com
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