Beatles News

“It’s a love that lasts forever, It’s a love that had no past.”

When John Lennon sang these words in “Don’t Let Me Down,” he was also living them. He had found new love with Yoko Ono, and his life and art were rapidly changing. Recorded during the Get Back sessions and released as the B-side to the “Get Back” single, “Don’t Let Me Down” provides a snapshot of Lennon’s private side; in addition, his passionate performance demonstrates how he possessed one of the best voices in rock.

“Don’t Let Me Down” can be seen as a companion piece to “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” another song about his love for Ono. In “She’s So Heavy,” the narrator takes on an almost desperate tone: He needs his lover to save him, not just seduce him. “When you’re drowning, you don’t say ‘I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,’ you just scream,” Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1971. In Barry Miles’ Many Years from Now, Paul McCartney explained that the lyrics accurately described the emotionally turbule details

December 1 signals one of the cheeriest times of year for holiday music fans. Radio stations and retail stores flip their playlists to all-seasonal tunes, which increases the odds of hearing “Christmas Wrapping” and “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in the wild. Putting together playlists of nothing but versions of “Last Christmas” becomes a perfectly viable time-waster. Not every holiday song is a winner — for example, the modern critiques of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” are long overdue — and those who despise seasonal music are in for a long few weeks. However, festive cheer more often than not beats out Grinch-like grumbling.

The exception? Paul McCartney’s 1979 solo single, “Wonderful Christmastime,” which has been a critical lightning rod for decades. Based around an oscillating synth melody that lands somewhere between sinewy funk and space-age ’70s rock, the song piles on sleigh bells, a slightly ragged-sounding McCartney vocal delivery, and very little lyrical substance. That last bit in particular has always rankled the song’s haters. In fact, although the Beatles are generally beloved, critics have been known to te details

As the year winds to a close, there seems to be a consensus that The Claypool Lennon Delirium is one of the best new projects to come out of 2016. Consisting of Les Claypool, the legendary madman bassist of Primus, and Sean Lennon, infamous guitarist of The Ghost of A Saber Tooth Tiger, the two have been blowing minds across the US with their dark and twisted psychedelic rock.

To acquaint new listeners to the project, Front Row Boston, a project produced by WGBH Music and Crossroads Presents in association with NPR Music, was there to capture the Claypool Lennon Delirium’s show in August at the House of Blues in Boston.

The resulting footage is a aesthetically beautiful and sonically expansive introduction to the Claypool Lennon Delirium, which also features keyboardist Pete Drungle and drummer Paolo Baldi of Cake. Those with patience can catch the set on television this Saturday, December 17, at 11:30 PM on WGBH 2. Kindly, the folks over at WGBH Music have made the video along with a setlist available now online, both of which can be found below.

The video that will be airing slices out the non-Primus covers performed during the night. Luckily, many of those performances have also been made availa details

Imagine seeing the biggest band of all time. At a venue near Surrey. With just 17 other people. For a few lucky souls, this actually happened. Saturday December 19, 1961. The day The Beatles came to Aldershot - and played to just 18 people. It's a date etched into local folklore, but for all the wrong reasons.

Friday marked 55 years to the day since the fateful gig at the Palais Ballroom, organised by promoter Sam Leach. The night was billed a Liverpool vs London Battle of the Bands, but the first in a whole host of issues was the only London outfit, Ivor Jay and the Jaywalkers, failed to turn up. And then, when the doors to the Palais opened, the crowd was conspicuous by its absence, with no more than six people stood outside waiting to get in.

So what went wrong?

A mix-up between Mr Leach and the Aldershot News meant the gig wasn’t advertised and the group, who were to become the biggest in the world, played to a very spartan audience. Mr Leach maintains he booked a sizeable advert in the newspaper and sent a cheque down to cover the cost of it.

When they arrived, Sam told the group he’d promoted the gig in a big way and bought a copy of the News, expecting to see that large adverti details

On the evening of Friday, December 5th, 1980, John Lennon spoke to Rolling Stone editor Jonathan Cott for more than nine hours at his apartment on New York's Upper West Side and at the Record Plant recording studio. Three nights later, Lennon would be murdered as he was returning home from a mixing session. The interview had originally been scheduled to run as the cover story of the first issue of 1981, but after Lennon's killing, Cott instead wrote an obituary for Lennon and ended up using very little from their conversations. In fact, he never even fully transcribed his tape. On the 30th anniversary of Lennon's death, we present, for the first time, the full text of Lennon's last major print interview: the joyous, outrageously funny, inspiring, fearless and subversive conversation Lennon shared with us that night, as he was preparing to jump back into the limelight after five years of private life with Yoko and their young son, Sean.

"Welcome to the inner sanctum!" said John Lennon, as he greeted me with high-spirited, mock ceremoniousness in Yoko Ono's beautiful cloud-ceilinged office in their Dakota apartment. It was December 5th, 1980. I sat down on a couch next to Yoko, and she began telling me how their collabora details

No matter how much you think you know about the Beatles, Mark Lewisohn probably knows more.

Hundreds of books have been written about the band, but none with such care and authority as those by the 58-year-old British author. His resume includes comprehensive releases on their concert performances (“The Beatles Live!”) and studio work (“The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions”), for which he was given a Beatle obsessive’s dream job, getting paid by EMI Records to enter the inner sanctum of the Abbey Road studio and listen to the band’s recordings.

“I was a researcher and realized that the books (on the Beatles) were not quite as well-researched or written as I had expected them to have been,” he told The Associated Press during a recent interview, explaining how he evolved from fan to author. “One project led to the next and suddenly I found myself with a career as a writer, which I hadn’t actually intended.”

The Beatles themselves welcomed him to their special world. He assisted on the band’s multimedia retrospective Anthology that came out in the 1990s and served as the editor and writer of “Club Sandwich,” a magazine r details

On the 36th anniversary of the untimely assassination of John Lennon, we wanted to step back and reflect on one of rock’s greatest songwriters and poets. Lennon’s musical contribution was enormous, his pathos and introspective soul spoke to a nation of lost British souls, and then to the rest of the world.

John Winston Lennon was born October 9, 1940, into a working class family in Liverpool, England. His early life was difficult. His father took off to the seas, leaving his young mother to raise her son alone. When he was a teenager, Lennon’s mother was killed in an auto accident. Lacking parental guidance, Lennon was a troubled youth, prone to rage and anger. Eventually he channeled his passion into art school and then into music.

As did many youths of his generation, Lennon turned to American Rock and R&B for its sheer energy and unabashed disregard for authority. Lennon took to it like a magnet to steel. Forming a friendship with Paul McCartney and then George Harrison, they formed a band that played covers of their favorite American artists: Elvis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, et al. While the lives of Lennon and his bandmates were in disarray, the focus of the band and thei details

It's a cool, sunny morning when the busload of tourists descends onto Havana's John Lennon Park. That's Aleeda Rodriguez Pedrasa's cue. She jumps out from under the shade of a nearby tree and scurries toward the bronze statue of the Beatles legend -- all the while fishing for a pair of spectacles in her purse. She quickly places them on the bridge of Lennon's nose, seconds before the first of the tourists moves in for a picture.

Padrasa has one of the most unusual jobs in Cuba: She's the keeper of Lennon's glasses. It's a job for which the government pays her 245 Cuban pesos a month, more than what many other Cubans make. "I've been working here for two years," says the 72-year-old Padrasa.

Cuba has had an interesting relationship with Lennon. In 1964, then-leader Fidel Castro declared a ban on Beatles' music, as part of his war against Western capitalism. But the band was a mega-act at the time, and smuggled copies of its tunes made it into the island. "He was very loved in the '70s," Padrasa says. "He was very loved and people listened to his music, but it wasn't allowed."

Fast forward to the time when Lennon became a vocal political dissident, criticizing the U.S. involvement in foreign lands. That en details

On 8 December 1980, John Lennon was shot four times in the back outside of his apartment building in New York City.

He was 40 years old.

7 days after his death, millions of people paused their daily routines to honour Yoko Ono's request for ten minutes of silence in commemoration of his contributions.

30,000 gathered in Liverpool, 225,000 in New York City's Central Park. The radios went silent, too.

That strength of love for this man, this musician in a band, has quelled little over the years. His outspoken political activism has made him a herald for those who have so longed for global peace and "Imagine" has become their perennial anthem; it re-entered the UK charts at number 18 in 2012 after Emeli Sandé recorded a cover for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

His legacy is eternal, though his presence is so greatly missed. And though he would have wished it weren't so, Lennon's words still ring just a true today as they did in his own lifetime. Here are a select few:

"A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality."

By: Clarisse Loughrey

Source: The Independent

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Nigel Sinclair -- producer of The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years -- told Billboard that Tuesday's (Dec. 6) news that the Ron Howard-directed movie was nominated for best music film at the 59th annual Grammy Awards is a great ending to the story of making the film.

"Working with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Ron Howard was the experience of a lifetime. Getting nominated for a Grammy on top of that is just completely over the top. We [the producing team] are all honored,” Sinclair said in a phone interview from London. "Ron and all the producers were very encouraged that we found a story to tell that was fresh and wasn't the same story that people had heard. We found a way to shine a light on this extraordinary adventure with a slightly different emphasis and find some new truths for a new generation."

Besides the Beatles film, the Grammy nominations also had good news for Paul McCartney, whose deluxe edition of the Tug of War reissue from Concord Music is up for best boxed or special limited edition package.

In addition, two projects covering songs by The Beatles and Paul McCartney also will be in the running for awards. John Daversa's album Kaleidoscope Eyes: Music of the Be details

DID you know that The Beatles had an honorary member for 13 days?

Jimmie Nicol joined the band for a short stint in 1964 – after Ringo Starr was hospitalised with tonsillitis.

Jimmie not only got the opportunity to play with The Beatles during the height of their fame, but he also got the chance to hang around with music legends John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison. However, this only lasted for two weeks, and then everything went back to normal for Jimmie. Jimmie’s whirlwind began when Ringo Starr collapsed with tonsillitis on the eve of The Beatles’ 1964 Australian tour.

The band’s manager Brian Epstein, as well as their producer George Martin urgently discussed the viability of using a stand-in drummer rather than cancelling the rest of the tour. George happened to suggest Jimmie Nicol – as he had recently used him on a recording session with Tommy Quickly.

Jimmie appeared in his first Beatles concert just 27 hours later at the KB Hallen in Copenhagen, Denmark. Before hitting the stage, he was styled with the distinctive Beatle mop-top hairstyle and even wore Ringo’s suit – despite the trousers being too short. Paul McCartney recalled teasin details

John Lennon was always the radical one in The Beatles, but it wasn’t until he left that his politics exploded. These are his 10 greatest rebel songs.

The advent of John Lennon’s solo career in 1969 coincided with his immersion in the anti-war movement, human rights issues and various other radical causes. Though his opposition to US involvement in Vietnam brought him into conflict with the authorities, leading to a protracted deportation case and FBI surveillance that posited Lennon as a national threat. Inevitably, his music reflected his polemical stance, popularising the message with user-friendly anthems like Give Peace A Chance, Power To The People and others. “Now I understand what you have to do,” Lennon declared. “Put your political message across with a little honey.”

10. Attica State (1972)

First performed at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally at the University of Michigan in December 1971, this bitter condemnation of the American judicial system was sparked by the Attica State prison riots that had erupted two months earlier, leaving 43 people dead. Lennon’s plea for better living conditions also carries a wider remit: “Come together, join the movem details

On the 50th anniversary of the iconic album, the engineers of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Geoff Emerick and Richard Lush will be fixing a hole in the hearts of Beatles fans everywhere with a once in a lifetime Q&A event and exhibition named The Masters of Sgt. Pepper.

Presented by Planetshakers in Southbank, not only will the event dish the untold deets about the iconic album from a producer’s perspective, it will also be celebrated with performances by Leo Sayer and Davey Lane from You Am I.

The event promises a panel of Beatles royalty disclosing all the behind the scenes details as well as a limited edition merch sale.

Lush has been immersed in London’s music scene ever since starting his recording career at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in the 1960’s. He learnt from masters of the music industry Sir George Martin, Phil Spector, Phil Ramone and Mickie Most before recording some of the world’s biggest artists: The Beatles, Cliff Richard, Paul McCartney & Wings, John Lennon and The London Symphony Orchestra.

For the Beatles, Lush was a significant backbone to their musical success, working on more than a hundred sessions. After joining EMI as a j details

If you ask those who know me pretty well, they will tell you my favorite Beatle was John Lennon. This is incorrect. My wife will tell you true: it’s George Harrison. Lennon is widely credited as the band’s conscience in the face of Paul McCartney’s more instinctively capitalist pop music impulses, and this is just one more way that Harrison’s songwriting contributions have been disregarded over the years. His post-Beatlemania solo work was often criticized for its preachiness, but if one goes back to his Beatles material, Harrison never pretended to be more pop star than preacher.

There was a great tribute paid to his entire body of work in 2014, the George Fest charity concert organized by his son, Dhani Harrison. A standout track toward the end of the first disc is “Savoy Truffle”, which I confess to not having heard before. It’s one of the deeper cuts from the Beatles catalogue, not completely obscure but hardly Top 40 material. As the holiday spirit takes over and I begin to devote many minutes to consideration of pies, eggnogs and sweets generally, I feel myself turning toward “Savoy Truffle” as the best possible type of wintry instruction.

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It was while Gillian McCain and I were working on sixty-nine: An Oral History, our new book on the 60s music scene, that we got the idea to create chapters where we hadn't done any of the interviews ourselves. Rather, the material came from a variety of secondary sources that we edited together, such as interviews from magazines like Rolling Stone and books like Peter Fonda's Don't Tell Dad. Not many chapters were created this way—just two or three—and since LSD played a major role in the music scene, we chose for one of our "experimental" chapters in the book to use this bricolage style to detail the first time the Beatles willingly experimented with acid on their own. Some quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

The Beatles took their first acid trip by accident. In the spring of 1965, John Lennon and George Harrison, along with their wives Cynthia Lennon and Patti Boyd, were having dinner over their dentist's house when they were first "dosed" with LSD.

Dentist John Riley and his girlfriend, Cyndy Bury, had just served the group a great meal, and urged their distinguished guests to stay for coffee, which they reluctantly did...

Riley wanted to be the first person to turn on the Bea details