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Beatles News
The Lebrecht Album of the Week has the first review of a premier album of orchestral and film music by George Martin, the Beatles’ man behind the glass wall.
How good a musician was the Beatles’ producer? I talked to George Martin three or four times and, while I found him very likeable, was unimpressed by his musical curiosity. Like many other producers I knew at Abbey Road, he was a purposeful fixer who knew what needed to be done to make a track work and which of London’s hundreds of freelancers he had to call in to patch up a session that, somehow, lacked the finishing touch. String quartet for ‘Yesterday’, piccolo trumpet for ‘Penny Lane’, George Martin knew who to call and how to integrate them. He had a quirky turn of mind, rather than an original concept.
Source: Slipped Disc
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In 1971 John Lennon traded a rare, autographed copy of The Beatles Yesterday And Today compilation record for the infamous Yellow Matter Custard bootleg, a fan-taped reel-to-reel collection of early-Beatles radio performances that had never been commercially released. Now, Lennon’s personal copy of Yesterday And Today is expected to fetch nearly a quarter-million dollars at auction.
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You could argue for the rest of your life about what constitutes the first rock’n’roll record and, indeed, on the internet, there are people prepared to do that. An exhaustive 82-track 2011 compilation comes up with candidates for the title, with varying degrees of plausibility, and with tunes dating back to 1915. But Fats Domino’s 1949 single The Fat Man has a stronger claim than most. Based on Junkers’ Blues, a 1940 track originally recorded by Champion Jack Dupree, there’s almost nothing to it. A pounding, unchanging backbeat and an insistent bass pulse; Domino on piano, playing in a style noticeably more aggressively than that of his peers; saxes and guitar buried so deep in the mix that you barely even spot them until the song’s finale; some falsetto scat singing and three verses that replace Junkers’ Blues’ references to cocaine, reefers and heroin with lyrics that laud both Domino’s bulk and his irresistible sexual abilities: “I weigh two hundred pounds, all the girls love me, because I know my way around.” It sold a million copies and transformed Domino overnight from the pianist in Billy Diamond’s Solid Senders, a locally popular New Orleans band, details
Everything fades, include The Beatles. At least according to Google data.
Interest in The Beatles is plunging dramatically on both Google and YouTube, according to data from the search giant. A quick look at Google Trends shows a fairly dramatic erosion in search traffic on both mainline search and YouTube, with drops reaching 70% since the early 2000s.
Here’s a look at overall Beatles searches on Google, worldwide, since 2004.
Source: digitalmusicnews.com
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It was more than 50 years ago but the gigs The Beatles played in Gloucestershire are committed to many memories of gig-goers at the time – but where did the term Beatlemania come from?
It’s been claimed that the word used to describe the hysteria which followed the Fab Four everywhere they went was invented in Gloucestershire, after a gig in Cheltenham.
Former Citizen journalist Hugh Worsnip, who saw the Liverpudlian four piece play in Gloucester, said that according to the book Beatlemania by Martin Creasy the first mention of the word was in the Daily Mirror on November 3, 1963, following the opening night of the Beatles fourth tour at the Odeon in Cheltenham.
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There never was a time like it for these boys. Just look at the joy in their smiles. So young and fresh-faced in their inexpensive suits and ties, sensible, unshowy haircuts and polished black shoes.
At a glance you might think they are a works football squad, celebrating, along with their young coach from accounts, a lucky away win in an amateur cup first round with a 'jump for joy' photo-shoot.
But look more closely and those four young men on the left may seem rather familiar. As well they might, because they are John Lennon, Ringo Starr, George Harrison and Paul McCartney.
What they are celebrating — along with their friends Gerry and the Pacemakers and Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas — isn't goals, but No. 1 records in the pop charts.
Source: Ray Connolly For The Daily Mail
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KENT — John Lennon’s sister and her children were watching a BBC documentary about her brother and the story couldn’t have been further from the truth, so she decided to write her own book to set the record straight.
At a concert with The Mersey Beatles on Saturday at Kent Stage, Julia Baird will meet with fans and sign copies of her book: “Imagine This: Growing Up with My Brother John Lennon” that knocks the biographies’ claims that John was abandoned by his mother.
“I think the Beatles are a modern-day Beethoven,” Baird said in an interview with Record-Courier. “People study the lives of the Beatles like they study the life of Beethoven. There’s books and biographies. Friends of friends of someone who knew them and they’re the ‘experts’ that write about John’s life. After John died, stories about our family became wild and he’s no longer around to do anything. I thought I’ve got to do something.”
Baird, the director of the Cavern Club, is on tour with The Mersey Beatles, a Liverpool-born Beatles tribute band and longtime house band at the world-famous club in England where the Beatles gigged before the details
This past Friday, Ringo Starr and his All Starr Band kicked off an eight-show Las Vegas residency at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino, and the ex-Beatles drummer dedicated the show to the victims of the recent horrific mass shooting that took place in the city. He also made a personal donation the day before.
On Thursday, Starr and wife Barbara Bach donated $100,000 via their Lotus Foundation charity to the Nevada Resort Association’s just-launched Vegas Strong Fund, which supports the shooting victims and their families.
Matching the Starrs’ donation was Caesars Entertainment President and CEO Mark Frissora, whose company owns the Planet Hollywood resort. The $200,000 is part of a total of $2 million that Caesars Entertainment has contributed to the fund.
Source: columbusnewsteam.com
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George Martin dubbed it “the song I hated most of all.” In his book Here, There and Everywhere, Geoff Emerick called it “substandard,” a “weak track” with “minimal content that seemed to go nowhere.” Ian MacDonald dismissed it as “dismal” and a “self-indulgent dirge” in Revolution in the Head. George Harrison later described it as a “piss take.”
Indeed, “Only a Northern Song” is rarely ranked among fans’ favorite Beatles songs. Does the song deserve to be dismissed as insignificant? It may not be listed among all-time favorites, but the track is notable for its psychedelic elements, as well as addressing a piece of Beatles history.
Indirectly, “Only a Northern Song” references the Beatles battle over publishing rights. How the Beatles lost ownership of their own songs dates back to 1963, when Brian Epstein decided to form a publishing company that would maintain ownership of the Beatles’ compositions. Music publisher Dick James, Epstein, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney became majority owners of Northern Songs, Ltd. The two Beatles each owned 20 percent of the business. Just two years later, Nor details
The Beatles still rake in £67,000 a day from a company they formed before they split, nearly 50 years ago.
Apple Corps, set up in 1968 to manage their affairs, declared a turnover of £24.4 million for the year ending January 31.
It is owned by surviving Beatles Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, as well as George Harrison and John Lennon’s widows Olivia and Yoko Ono. Accounts show each was paid £2.97 million in “aggregate fees for promotional services, name and likeness”.
Profit before tax rose to £5.7 million – £3.9million up on 2016.
The company – which doesn’t even own the Beatles back catalogue of songs – made £10million from 2016 documentary The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years. It has previously cashed in on The Beatles: Rock Band video game.
Apple Corps – which had a long dispute over its name with Apple computers – reports having £16.9million in cash. But Sir Paul McCartney, 75, is thought to be worth £780 million alone. The band split in 1970.
Source: Mark Jefferies
Ringo Starr remembered his "good friend" Tom Petty in a new interview following the rock icon's death at the age of 66.
"I'll miss Tom. Tom was a good friend. I played with Tom, Tom played with me. I got to know him over the years, really got to know him when he was in the [Traveling] Wilburys 'cause of George [Harrison]," Starr told Billboard.
"All through my career we've lost really great friends, and people who aren't my friends, but were great musicians and writers. In our business we've lost them very young as well. But overall there's still a lot of us out there doing what we do."
Starr happened to be in Las Vegas on business at the time of the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting, which occurred hours before Petty's death.
Source: Daniel Kreps
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In the final year of the turbulent 1960s, as the Vietnam War and the massive counter-cultural protests against it reached new levels of intensity, John Lennon and Yoko Ono visited Canada three separate times.
The purpose of these trips varied, but on the third and final one they achieved what seems to have been among their top priorities as the leading peace activists of the era: they met the prime minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau.
During John and Yoko’s first visit in the spring of 1969, they staged their famous “Bed-In” at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, lying down together for eight days in front of the world’s media to publicize their message of peace, and in the middle of it all recording their anti-war anthem Give Peace a Chance.
Source:Robert Morrison
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I finally got a look at sculptor David Adickes' giant statues of the Beatles. John, Paul, George, and Ringo, four tons per Beatle, stand in the backyard of 8th Wonder Brewery, located near downtown Houston.
“We have an agreement for the Beatles statues to be here for at least one year,” said Ryan Soroka, “entrebrewneur” and president of the craft brewery. “We have plenty of room for them in our backyard. Like everyone, I grew up with the Beatles music, so I’m honored and happy to have them. People take photos with the statues. It’s pretty cool.”
As part of the deal, Soroka had to pay for the statues to be disassembled and transported from Adickes' property off I-10 to the brewery. John, Paul, and George each were delivered in three pieces, while the more elaborate Ringo sculpture arrived in five pieces because of his drum kit.
Source:Eric Sandler
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Sir Paul McCartney remembers John Lennon on 77th birthday.
The musician wrote he was “reaching out to Johnny on his birthday” in a post on Twitter alongside an old photograph of the pair.
In the black and white snap, Sir Paul is reaching across a recording studio towards Lennon.
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Over 40 years since the Beatles celebrated the peak of their career and changed music forever and today (9 October) would have been John Lennon’s 77th birthday.
A singer, songwriter, and activist, Lennon’s work remains at the inspirational core of popular music and is cherished in the heart of fans across the world.
On his birthday, we look back at the seven best lyrics of his career.
Tomorrow Never Knows, 1966
‘Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream
It is not dying, it is not dying’
Closing the 1966 Beatles album Revolver, ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ pinpoints the moment the band took a leap towards a more psychedelic future. The vast imagery in the song’s lyrics was adapted from The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Source: Independent News
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