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Beatles News
A new report delves into the impact that Lennon's heroin addiction had on the iconic rock band.
John Lennon’s addiction to heroin during a time when it was poorly understood may have played a significant role in the breakup of the Beatles, according to an article published in Salon.
Fans have long speculated on just how much of the lyrics in the late Beatle's songs reference the powerful illicit opioid, but a look into Lennon’s own words and reports from those close to him paint a picture of someone who was deep into an addiction disorder before he was able to finally quit.
The Beatles were not shy about experimenting with drugs during their time in the spotlight. Early in their music careers, the members of the Beatles were “veteran pill-poppers,” using amphetamines regularly.
They were then introduced to cannabis by Bob Dylan, and a former housekeeper employed by Lennon wrote a letter claiming that she “began noticing drugs lying around in various parts of the house.”
Source: Lindsey Weedston/thefix.com
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Sometimes, the Academy makes the right pick on Oscar night. In 2019, watching Alfonso Cuarón receive the Best Director made perfect sense. (Roma is that good.)
The same goes for Mahershala Ali winning his second Oscar in what has been an incredible career so far. Anyone who saw him in Green Book (or True Detective, or anything else) knows how talented Ali is.
In the Best Actress race, most would agree that a worthy nominee — Olivia Colman, for The Favourite — walked away with the trophy. However, it made many observers look back on the career of Glenn Close (nominated for The Wife) and wonder how she’s never won an Oscar.
With The Beatles having won their Oscar decades ago and Close still in the hunt, it seems like it’s time to take stock of the situation.
Source: cheatsheet.com
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Whether you go by albums sales, No. 1 hits, or overall legend, you’ll always find The Beatles and Elvis Presley at the top of the list. However, if you want to start counting the times they topped the charts, you go by the combination of record sales and radio airplay that Billboard put in place.
Starting in 1958, this chart became known as the Hot 100. Prior to that, Billboard called it the Top 100, though the system of measurement was basically the same. Those dates matter when you start counting the chart-topping hits by the Fab Four and Elvis.
Obviously, both artists racked up a number of No. 1 hits in their time. However, in Elvis’s case, his career spanned from the Top 100 days through the Hot 100 era. As a result, Billboard only credits The King with seven No. 1 hits.
Yet Elvis topped the charts twice as often, and and spent more than 14 months as the No. 1 artist over the course of his career.
Source: cheatsheet.com
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Walnut Ridge, Arkansas -- On September 20-21, Walnut Ridge will play host to the 7th Annual Beatles at the Ridge Symposium, this year celebrating "Beatles Memorabilia and Collectibles."
In the spirit of that theme Featured Author, Jim Berkenstadt (of the Amazon Best Seller The Beatle Who Vanished), Featured Artist, Ken Orth (creator and curator of the "Meet the Look-Alikes!" collection) and Primary Source Speaker, Art Schreiber (journalist from the Westinghouse Network who toured with The Beatles in 1964) will share rare collectibles and information on these pieces.
On Friday night, September 20, Jim Berkenstadt will talk about a guitar in his possession that was used by George Harrison in an LA studio to record a special version of "Got My Mind Set On You." Berkenstadt will explain how he was able to authenticate the guitar, its use by George, and Harrison's signature. He will also address other Beatles pieces, examining the mysteries and stories behind them.
Source:beatlesnews.com
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February 25 is the birth anniversary of George Harrison, the popular British songwriter and musician known best as a member of the famous Beatles group.
It is now very well known that Harrison wrote a song especially for Dehradun during his stay at the ashram of Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh in the late 1960s. For the Beatles, their stay in India was their most creative period. When they were in Rishikesh for several weeks in February, March and April of 1968 (they stayed at Mahesh Yogi’s spiritual centre in Rishikesh), they wrote many songs, most of which were included in their “White Album”, one of their best known.
Born on February 25, 1943, in Liverpool, England, Harrison formed a band with schoolmates to play in clubs around Liverpool.
Source: The Pioneer/dailypioneer.com
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Ted Nugent used to say: “If it’s too loud, you’re too old.”
So if, in fact, “rock n’ roll is a young man’s game” as many musicians have claimed, then why are there so many aging rockers still touring?
As Sammy Hagar, now 71, told a Toronto crowd in 2013: “What do you want me to do? Play golf?”
Or to Ringo Starr’s point at a 2013 press conference at Casino Rama about two hours north of Toronto: “It’s what I do. You know I’m not an electrician, I play drums.”
And isn’t it more than a little age-ist to say you have to pack it in as a rocker after a certain age if — big IF — you still have the energy and ability, songs that stand the test of time, and people are willing to pay money to see you in droves?
Source: Jane Stevenson/torontosun.com
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The Beatles were baffled at the overt religiosity of the United States in the 1960s
In January 1969 on a rooftop in central London The Beatles played their last concert together — or rather, not so much a concert as a makeshift performance, part of a documentary film then being shot. It was a dismal end to the band’s live appearances that had been among some of the most glittering of recent times.
Fifty years on, The Beatles and their anniversaries are remembered with almost religious awe by their legions of fans who, it appears, grow more numerous as the decades pass.
But what of The Beatles and religion?
Much is made of the flirtations of the Fab Four with Eastern religions of one sort or another and the resultant iconic images of the four musicians in India on retreat. Little is made of the band’s Christian roots. Two of the band, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, were both baptized Catholic; John Lennon and Ringo Starr were Anglicans.
Source: K.V. Turley/ncregister.com
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Jonny Amies in “My Very Own British Invasion.” Note the incorrect lyrics to “In My Life” above him.
John Lennon wrote the Beatles song “In My Life,” with some help from Paul McCartney and Beatles producer George Martin (who should have received a co-writing credit) in 1965. Fifteen years later, in his last major interview, Lennon described it as “a remembrance of friends and lovers of the past.”
That is, I think, how most people see it: A sweet song about looking back on the past.
But that’s not what it’s about. It’s really the least nostalgic song you could imagine.
I’ve thought this about “In My Life” for a long time, but was inspired to write this post after seeing the new jukebox musical, “My Very Own British Invasion,” at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn. (Here’s my review). The song is used at the end of the evening, to put a sentimental spin on a story of love won and lost in the heady days of the 1960s British Invasion.
“In My Life” ends with the line “I love you more,” but in “My Very Own British Invasion,” it is changed to “I loved y details
Over 50 years after the The Beatles’ ‘White Album’ first stormed the charts, the Fab Four’s iconic double-album achieved 24-time Platinum-certified status – making it the fourth-highest certified release in US history.
The Beatles currently have the distinction as being the highest certified band in Gold and Platinum Award history, with 178 million certifications across their discography. Both 1967-1970 and 1962-1966 compilations along with Abbey Road and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band have far surpassed Diamond certification.
“The Beatles are undoubtedly one of the most influential bands of all time, with music that stands the test of time,” said Mitch Glazier, Chairman and CEO, Recording Industry Association of America.
Source: Laura Stavropoulos/udiscovermusic.com
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The new issue of Uncut – in shops now and available to buy online by clicking here – follows John Lennon throughout a turbulent 1969 as he embarks on a series of wild avant-garde experiments with Yoko Ono on the way to extricating himself from The Beatles and establishing himself as a solo artist.
As well as the famous bed-ins, the naked experimental films, the avant-garde albums and the political campaigns, there is the formation of a new musical outfit, The Plastic Ono Band, hastily assembled to play the Toronto Rock’N’Roll Revival festival at the invitation of Kim Fowley on September 13, 1969.
The Plastic Ono Band bassist Klaus Voorman remembers rehearsing their set of rock’n’roll classics on the plane from London. “We went once through each song,” Voormann tells Peter Watts. “Then we got to ‘Cold Turkey’. I thought it was a great song and we should spend time to
get the right feeling, but we didn’t.”
Source: uncut.co.uk
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The year The Beatles broke up is burned in the minds of most fans of the Fab Four. Though there might not have been an exact day, everyone can agree it happened by spring 1970.
However, the real end of the group’s collaboration arrived the previous year. In a particularly detailed post-mortem in Rolling Stone, you find John Lennon shooting down a request by Paul McCartney to keep the band together for one last run.
“I wasn’t going to tell you, but I’m breaking the group up,” Lennon told Paul. It was September 1969.
Yet for fans who loved to see The Beatles in concert, the distancing had begun several years earlier — summer 1966, to be exact. That’s the last time anyone saw the band play multiple stops on a tour.
Decades later, the decision to stop touring only a few years after their arrival in America seems odd. But looking at the events leading up to it, you can see why The Beatles stopped playing live shows.
Source: cheatsheet.com
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It wasn’t quite rags to riches, but the story of Welsh singer Mary Hopkin’s dizzy rise during 1968 takes some beating. In May of that year, just as she was turning 18, she appeared on the British TV talent show Opportunity Knocks. Improbably, it would lead her into the inner circle of The Beatles and to an international No. 1.
Hopkin won that contest, and had the good fortune that the famous model Twiggy was watching the show. When she, in turn, was talking to Paul McCartney about potential artists for The Beatles’ new Apple label, Twiggy mentioned Mary. Soon afterwards, the singer received a message to call Peter Brown at Apple.
“So I rang up,” Hopkin remembered later, “and was put through to this guy with a Liverpool accent, who invited me to come up to London and sign a contract.
Source: Paul Sexton/udiscovermusic.com
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Peter Tork, the bassist for the Monkees, has died aged 77.
Tork, who also sang on a number of the band’s songs and played keyboards, had been diagnosed with a rare form of tongue cancer in 2009, though the cause of his death, which was confirmed by his sister, has not been announced.
Born in Washington DC in 1942, Tork – whose real name was Peter Thorkelson – joined the Monkees when he was 24 after the quartet were brought together by US TV executives aiming to create a teenage guitar-pop sensation to match the Beatles. Tork was recommended to audition by Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and was already an accomplished musician in his own right, having played on the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early 1960s. He said he was “mortified” when he turned up to an early Monkees studio date to be told that their band’s album had already been recorded by session musicians.
Source: Ben Beaumont-Thomas/theguardian.com
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While fans of The Beatles might have been distraught when the group broke up in 1970, they could follow each member of the Fab Four in his solo career.
In a sense, that gave them four albums for the price of one. Even if every one didn’t turn out like Revolver, you couldn’t argue with the output.
Soon enough, ex-Beatles were topping the charts with singles and albums as solo artists. Fans only had to wait until later in that first year, when George Harrison released his triple album, All Things Must Pass. Within those six sides was “My Sweet Lord,” the first track by an ex-Beatle to hit No. 1.
In the coming decades, Harrison would find himself on top of the charts with two more singles and as many albums. Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and John Lennon (the last) followed their old bandmate to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in the coming years as well.
Source: cheatsheet.com
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During a recent interview with Russia’s Sputnik News, John Lennon’s sister Julia Baird has shared her thoughts on biggest misconception about Yoko Ono and The Beatles.
Interviewer asked ‘Are there any misconceptions in the media about John’, Julia responded:
“There are lots. He had a very tough, chippy, chirpy exterior but he was actually as soft as jelly underneath, and not many people really bothered, they were enjoying the chippy chirpy interviews and they were able to criticise him, and they didn’t really look much beyond.
To be fair, John wouldn’t have let them much beyond either, but there was a completely different John from the one that you saw.”
Interviewer said:
“In your opinion is it unfair to blame the breakup of the Beatles on Yoko Ono?”
Source: Feyyaz Ustaer/metalheadzone.com
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