Beatles News

The cover photograph of the Beatles Abbey Road album is one of the most iconic images of pop history. Taken in 1969, it shows the group walking across a zebra crossing. Led by a white suited John Lennon, the Fab Four cross from left to right. Paul, of course, is barefooted.

But there are other versions, including the group crossing the other way, and there are even shots with Paul wearing sandals.

Now these rarely seen alternative takes are being put up for auction in New York next Thursday. In all there are six photos taken by Iain Macmillan, who only ever made a handful of sets of the images. For decades Macmillan, who died in 2006, just sat on the negatives, said Nigel Russell, director of photographs with Heritage Auctions, which is conducting the sale. This set was given to an executive with the Capitol record company, which had the US rights to the Beatles’ music at the time. It was sold onto a collector who has put them up for sale.

The whereabouts of the other remaining sets is unknown. “It doesn’t appear the rest were sold in a gallery, we think they were given away to others involved in the 1969 recording,” he said.

The pictures were taken on August 8 1969 when t details

Phil Collins thinks Sir Paul McCartney is condescending. The 65-year-old star is former fan of the legendary singer, but his perception of Sir Paul took a sharp downward turn following an encounter at the Party at the Palace event at Buckingham Palace in 2002, which marked the Golden Jubilee of Britain's Queen Elizabeth.

He said: "I've got to preface this by saying McCartney was one of my heroes. But he has this thing when he's talking to you, where he makes you feel ...[putting on a condescending Scouse accent] 'I know this must be hard for you, because I'm a Beatle. I'm Paul McCartney and it must be very hard for you to actually be holding a conversation with me.'"

Phil admitted he has "never forgot" the way he was treated by Sir Paul at Buckingham Palace. He explained to the Sunday Times newspaper: "I met him when I was working at the Buckingham Palace party at the palace thing back in 2002.

"McCartney came up with Heather Mills and I had a first edition of The Beatles by Hunter Davies and I said, 'Hey Paul, do you mind signing this for me?' And he said, 'Oh Heather, our little Phil's a bit of a Beatles fan.' And I thought, 'You f***, you f***.' Never forgot it."

Source: Hamilton Spectator

There are places I remember All my life, though some have changed. 

Some forever, not for better Some have gone and some remain.

All these places have their moments -- "In My Life" The Beatles

In February 1964, our somber nation, still reeling from the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, was invaded. Not by communists but by the British. Instead of arriving for battle as their forefathers had, these four mop-topped, 20-something Liverpool lads came in rockin' and played a role in a cultural revolution fueled by music. Soon on a first-name basis with America, John, Paul, George and Ringo made quite the first impression. Beatlemania swept the 50 states. And we were forever changed. "Ladies and Gentlemen ... The Beatles!" an interactive, artifact-driven traveling exhibit examining the phenomenon opened at the Clinton Presidential Center on Oct. 8 and runs through April 2. "It's really a look at the touring years," says Ben Thielemier, communications manager with the Clinton Foundation.

The exhibit of more than 400 items, including records, rare photos, instruments, clothing and tour artifacts, was curated by the Los Angeles-based Grammy Museum and Fab Four Exhibits LLC. Th details

During the heyday of Beatlemania, there was a commonly agreed-upon way of keeping up with each of the Fab Four…

Paul is the cute one George is the quiet one Ringo is the funny one John is the smart one

By “smart” I’m sure the fans meant John was witty, clever and—since his name appeared first on almost all Beatles songs–the real brains behind the band. Of course, John was very witty; most Beatles press conferences left reporters in stitches as he would fire wise cracks with machine gun speed. He also was extremely clever and despite the arrangement of the words “Lennon/McCartney” being a bit overblown, he was a brilliant songwriter. But he was also “smart” in that he was sometimes an icy smart alec. Sometimes it was charming, like with this little shot during a concert in front of the freaking Queen of England…

Other times however, he could come off as entirely cruel. He used to mock disabled people and often showed contempt for political leaders in cities and countries he visited. There’s also the fact that he abandoned his first wife and son, and occasionally was violent against women. Interviews from friends and associates often details

Desert Trip has offered several surprises. And on Saturday night the bright light was Rihanna who joined Paul McCartney onstage to belt out FourFiveSeconds. They first performed the song together at the 2015 Grammy Awards. The 28-year-old beauty wore a baggy pin-stripped suit as she made her way through the hit with the 74-year-old on his guitar. 'We finally found someone under the age of 50,' McCartney joked after she left the stage.

FourFiveSeconds, which was also co-written by Kanye West, has been a regular song in both Rihanna and Paul's set lists since the single made its debut in January 2015. Neil Young was also on hand to perform A Day in the Life which was combined with John Lennon's Give Peace A Chance and Why Don't We Do It in the Road? Paul's daughter, fashion designer Stella McCartney, and her friend Kate Hudson were in the audience. 

This comes after the Rolling Stones hit the stage for the second weekend on Friday. Mick Jagger, 73, took the stage in a bright pink and red jacket to belt out some of his oldies like Start Me Up and Angie. Paris Hilton and Alessandra Ambrosio shared their images from the event on Snapchat and Instagram. 

Paris said she was 'thrilled' to be in the des details

John E. Carter doesn’t need the Internet in order to figure out which day of the week March 21, 1961 fell on. It was a Tuesday. Tuesday nights were when John’s band, the Bluegenes (which later morphed into the Swinging Blue Jeans), brought on a special guest at the Cavern in Liverpool. That particular night, he was on stage, introducing a local group making its nighttime debut in the popular, perspiration-drenched cellar club.

He did so reluctantly this time, and only at the insistence of club owner Ray McFall. “Our group didn’t want the Beatles on,” said John, 78, who played guitar with the Bluegenes, reminiscing at his home in Beaconsfield. “I’d seen the Beatles, and they were dirty. They were scruffy.” He had seen the not-yet-Fab Four play at a local church, St. Barnabas — where Paul McCartney had sung in the choir — and was put off by what he considered to be the group’s unprofessional attire, raw performance and rough demeanour.

After introducing the leather-clad quartet at the Cavern, John left the club for a pint. When he returned to resume his MCing duties, he was mildly shocked.

“George Harrison had broken a string,” h details

A new Paul McCartney song, written and performed by the former Beatle, appears on the soundtrack for the Raymond Briggs adaptation Ethel and Ernest, the Telegraph can exclusively reveal.

The animated film, based on Briggs's moving 1998 storybook about the lives of his parents, premieres this afternoon at the London Film Festival.

Jim Broadbent voices Briggs's father, milkman Ernest, while Brenda Blethyn plays his mother Ethel, who worked as a lady's maid before meeting her future husband in 1928. The film tells the story of the couple, from their marriage to the birth of their son (Briggs, played by Luke Treadaway), to their experiences during the Second World War and post-war years.

McCartney's new song, titled In the Blink of An Eye, plays over the end credits of the movie. Getting one of the most famous names in pop music to write a track for your film might sound like a bit of a daunting challenge but Ethel and Ernest director Roger Mainwood says he had an advantage: McCartney was already a fan of Briggs's work.

"I knew that Paul McCartney was a big animation fan and I knew that Raymond Briggs's book Fungus the Bogeyman had influenced Paul's 1980s track Bogey Music," he explained.

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This is the show I'm going to talk about on my deathbed--the day Sir Paul McCartney turned a high desert roadhouse into a modern day Cavern Club. It sounds like a dream, but it really did happen.

In between his Saturday night sets at Desert Trip, McCartney and his band blew in like tumbleweeds that can sing in perfect harmony to Pappy & Harriet's Pioneertown Palace on Thursday, Oct. 13, to play for a crowd of only a few hundred super fans who just found out about the show that morning when Macca announced it.

Some had seen McCartney's monster set at Desert Trip last weekend while others were headed to the Empire Polo Club this weekend. And there were high desert locals, like brothers Jaime and Mario Correa, 25 and 26, respectively, of Joshua Tree, who plunked down $50 each, in cash, for the show of a lifetime. Jaime Correa was working on a car engine when he heard about the show Thursday morning. "This is crazy," Jaime Correa said. "I didn't wake up this morning expecting to be here."

None of us did--well, except Macca and his band, and the merch guys, since there were posters ($10) and two different Pappy & Harriet's McCartney T-shirts for sale ($30).

Fans started unofficially lining up details

A Moray pensioner’s recollection of meeting The Beatles in the swinging 60s has been published in a new book about the Fab Four. A “cheeky” John Lennon leaned out of a window at student nurse Adeline Reid while theatrically clutching his chest, and asked her to take his pulse.

The encounter took place when the Merseyside musicians were playing their first ever Scottish gig, at Elgin’s Two Red Shoes ballroom, in early 1963. While Mrs Reid was “embarrassed” by the group’s attention at the time, the meeting became a source of pride when they hit the big time just a week later with the release of Please Please Me.

Yesterday, the Keith retiree reflected on how “lucky” she was to have her own personal memory of the pop legends. She said: “I was in my late teens and stayed at a bed and breakfast near the Two Red Shoes, while studying at Dr Gray’s Hospital in Elgin.

“Next door, there was a boarding house where a lot of the acts that played there stayed. “That day, The Beatles were all hanging out of a window there – with John Lennon nearest to me. “He held his hand to his heart, saying ‘nursie, nursie’, “T details

SOMETIMES I THINK I’m the biggest Beatles fan in the world, which is probably how most Beatles obsessives feel. At age five, I attended my first Beatles convention; by age six, I could make the distinction between the group’s UK and US discographies. I was a savant in Fab Four trivia.

When I hear somebody say “the Beatles suck” (probably the textbook utterance of boilerplate iconoclasm), I take it personally. The Beatles raised me—my birthfather never paid a dime in child support, but he did leave me a turntable and ragged, water-damaged copies of 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 (also known as the Red and Blue Albums, respectively). As I got older and started surrounding myself with more and more Beatle-bashing, wannabe provocateurs, the band’s music would become my own little embryonic asylum away from the obscurantist chest-beating of punk and indie.

If the fact that I’m having fewer idiotic arguments about the band on social media is any indication, it appears that the music community has settled on the consensus that the Beatles were patently great (even if John Lennon was an asshole). But there’s one myth that even diehards like myself remain susceptible to: that Ring details

Harrifest isn’t just a celebration of George Harrison’s music, or The Beatles’ impressive catalog of songs. The yearly event has also evolved into a “family” reunion of sorts, of friends united in their appreciation for John, Paul, Ringo and George, said organizers Rachel and Wayne Cabral. Westport resident Rachel Cabral started Harrifest in 2004. Over the years, it’s evolved into a two-day celebration highlighted with an array of live bands, seminars, yoga, Beatles-related artwork and items, and Beatles experts.

“It’s become a kinship... people who are like family who go year after year,” said Wayne Cabral. “There’s a great vibe in the room of people who love The Beatles and George Harrison.” This year’s Harrifest, marking 15 years since Harrison died from cancer, will be held Friday, Oct. 21 and Saturday, Oct. 22 at the Seaport Inn in Fairhaven. The proceeds are donated to the Southcoast Visiting Nurse Association.

The Cabrals — who are both in The Oh Nos, one of the bands that performs yearly — have a few special guests lined up lined up for this year including Greg Hawkes, of The Cars, and Erik Taros, who worked on Ron details

PAUL McCartney may have had a point when he famously said “if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian”.

A new psychological study lends support to the vegetarian former Beatle’s claim that people only stomach meat by distancing themselves from the animals whose flesh they consume. In a series of experiments, researchers showed that feelings of empathy were reduced the more the origin of a meat product was disguised by processing or packaging.

Language also played a role in making us more comfortable with having slices of dead animal on our plates, the scientists found. Replacing the words “pork” and “beef” on a menu with “pig” and “cow” made people less happy about eating meat.

Lead researcher Dr Jonas Kunst, from the Institute of Psychology at the University of Oslo, Norway, who is not a vegetarian, said: “The presentation of meat by the industry influences our willingness to eat it. “Our appetite is affected both by what we call the dish we eat and how the meat is presented to us. “The science results support a line of philosophers and animal rights activists who have said that the way meat is pres details

A few days after John Lennon died, in December 1980, the NME’s editor at the time, Neil Spencer, sat down and tried to encapsulate the man’s genius, influence and complexity. By necessity, the resulting obituary turned out to be a lengthy and emotional meditation. “It was not merely that his songs provided the soundtrack for our lives that made Lennon the voice of his generation,” wrote Spencer, “but that they so often seemed to crystallise the mood of the times, and to do so with an honesty that was apparent in the way the man lived out his life.

“That is one reason why his loss has hit the world so hard. Like most of us he was often selfish and unpleasant, but he was never miserly with himself or his soul, at least not in the latter part of his life. He gave. He shared. And now he’s gone, we too seem diminished. The part of us that responded to the man’s essential goodness, his dignity, his openness, and his optimism will be that much more difficult to locate without him around.”

“To say he is destined to be judged as one of the great men of his age is not mere emotionalism or fan adulation,” continued Spencer and, 36 years down the line, that j details

She may want to hold his hand. But Paul McCartney was occupied by his walking stick as he took a hike with wife Nancy Shevell on Monday. The 74-year-old rocker was full of life as he enjoyed the greenery of TreePeople Park in Beverly Hills. 

The Beatles legend looked fit in Nike trainers, blue shorts and a dark grey tee, topping the outfit off in a straw fedora. 

He picked himself up a practical accessory en route in an impressively honed walking stick. His 56-year-old wife meanwhile showed off her fab figure in a pair of tight yoga pants and long'sleeved top, trumping her hubby in a larger floppy sun hat.

McCartney is taking a well-deserved breather between gigs, having rocked Desert Trip on Saturday, and preparing to do the same again this weekend. He headlined Day Two of the first-ever 'Oldchella' music festival in Indio, California, and he certainly delivered. The 74-year-old singer turned back time as he blended tunes from his Beatles days, his years as Wings frontman to his current status as solo entertainer. 

While he arrived on stage a fashionably 30 minutes late, not one person in the 75,000 crowd held it against him as he launched straight into A Hard Day's Night. The rem details

Paul McCartney and Neil Young shared the bill at the Desert Trip music festival in Indio, Calif. Saturday, and they also shared the stage during McCartney's set. Young joined the former Beatle to perform A Day in the Life, which morphed into John Lennon's Give Peace a Chance.

The audience flashed peace signs as they sang along. Young played lead guitar to duet with McCartney on Why Don't We Do It In the Road? "Thank you, Neil," McCartney, 74, said when his friend left the stage. "I love that boy!"

McCartney's headlining 2 1/2-hour set was full of love. He paid tribute to his late wife and his current spouse during the performance, along with George Harrison, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones. He sang Maybe I'm Amazed for the late Linda McCartney, and dedicated My Valentine to his wife, Nancy, ahead of their fifth wedding anniversary Sunday.

He brought out a ukulele to perform Harrison's Something, but stopped the song almost as soon as he started. "I'm out of tune," McCartney said, alone on stage. "I'm going to get another one." A stagehand brought him another ukulele and McCartney began again. "At least it proves we're live, right?" he cracked.

Backed by a five-piece band, he played a few bars details