Beatles News

Surviving Beatles members Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney have performed together only sporadically since their famous group broke up in 1970, but Starr says he now would love to hit the road with his former band mate. At a recent event in Los Angeles celebrating his 76th birthday, the drummer told Closer Weekly, “I would tour with Paul McCartney tomorrow!”

Having said that Ringo noted, “I’m doing my own tours right now so we’d have to work it out.”

As for how he felt about reaching the ripe old age of 76, Starr quipped, “It would be nice to be 70 again! But you get up in the morning and you try to have the best day you can. And be in the best spirit that you can be!”

Speaking about good spirits, the rock legend is known for encouraging people to spread the message of peace and love around the world, as he did at his public birthday celebration in L.A.

At the event, he told Closer Weekly, “I think it is important with all the violence that there is peace and love! And maybe we can have more as the years go on!”

Source: ABC News Radio

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George Harrison's estate gently weeps over Donald Trump's use of his music. A representative from the late Beatles' estate quickly slammed the use of "Here Comes the Sun" during the final night of the Republican National Convention on Thursday. The beloved classic song played as Ivanka Trump emerged on stage to deliver her highly anticipated speech. "The unauthorized use of #HereComestheSun at the #RNCunCLE is offensive & against the wishes of the George Harrison estate," they wrote.

Many seemed to agree with the sentiment as the post was retweeted more than 7,000 times. They even suggested an alternative. "If it had been Beware of Darkness, then we may have approved it! #TrumpYourself," they continued.

The unauthorized use of the 1969 Harrison-penned track isn't the only liberty the Trump campaign has taken during the convention. Earlier in the day, The O'Jays decried their music being played at the Cleveland, Ohio convention. Their 1973 hit "Love Train" was used and even changed to "Trump Train."

By: Melanie Dostis

Source: NY Daily News

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He was gunned down outside his luxury New York apartment having left Britain after the break-up of The Beatles. But before he became a global star John Lennon vowed he would never live in the US, it has been revealed. Lennon made the comments in a previously lost interview with The Beatles from 1964 which has been discovered in a house in Doncaster, Yorkshire. 

The original reel-to-reel tape recording could now sell for £10,000. During the audio recording, interviewer Alistair McDougall asks the band if they would ever ‘consider taking up residence in America or even record over there’. Lennon replies: ‘You’re joking! Wouldn’t live there, wouldn’t mind recording there.’

The interview for the British Forces Broadcasting Network was recorded in Paris in January 1964 while The Beatles were on tour in France. Although they were a huge success in Britain at the time, Beatlemania had yet to take over the world. 

The audio tape was discovered in the home of Mr McDougall, who died in 2007, by friends during a clear-out of his home. Lennon moved permanently to New York from London with wife Yoko Ono in 1971 to escape the intense media spotlight on the coup details

Late July and early August 1968, one of the most iconic songs ever was recorded at Apple Studios London. Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, The Beatles “Hey Jude” is still as popular today as it was then. It all started during the break-up of John’s marriage to Cynthia, and Paul thought young Julian was taking it all pretty badly.

On his way to visit Cynthia at their home in Weybridge a line kept singing in his mind “Hey Jules, don’t make it bad, take I sad song and make it better” it was, he hoped an optimistic and hopeful message to Julian. Cynthia recalled “Paul turned up at the door wearing a red nose saying ‘sorry Cyn this isn’t right I don’t know what’s come over him’, he was the only member of the Beatles family who had the courage to stand up to John, in fact musically and personally they were both beginning to go in separate directions”. Paul finished the song at his home in Cavendish Avenue, London, and he changed Jules to Jude and John actually thought the song was about him. Paul wanted to change the line “The movement you need is on your shoulder” but John insisted he kept it in stating “That’s the details

A new, remastered live album containing the Beatles' performances at the Hollywood Bowl in 1964 and 1965 will be released this fall. The album, Live at the Hollywood Bowl, coincides with a new documentary by Ron Howard about the band's early career, dubbed Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years.

The album contains recordings from three different concerts, which took place on August 23rd, 1964 and August 29th and 30th, 1965, and the repertoire covers many of their early hits, including "Twist and Shout," "Ticket to Ride" and "A Hard Days Night," among others.

Although the group put out the platinum-selling The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl in 1977, the new record contains a different track list with four previously unreleased songs. The recordings were sourced directly from the three-track tapes of the concerts and were remixed and mastered at Abbey Road by George Martin's son, Giles, and engineer Sam Okell.

"Technology has moved on since my father worked on the material all those years ago," Giles said in a statement. "Now there's improved clarity, and so the immediacy and visceral excitement can be heard like never before. ... What we hear now is the raw energy of four lads playing together to a cr details

An inveterate patron of junk stores and flea markets, Dave Seabury was rummaging through a box at a garage sale in San Pablo in 1986 when he came across an old photographic contact sheet with 72 images of the Beatles in performance.

“I knew it was a find,” recalls Seabury, a Bay Area musician, painter and sculptor of salvaged material who performs with a piquant array of local bands — among them Psychotic Pineapple, the Rock & Roll Adventure Kids and the Chuckleberries — while working days at the Presidio Trust running the recycling and refuse disposal operation.

Seabury bought that unsigned contact sheet, which had previously been purchased at the Berkeley Flea Market, for $1. He tucked it in his collection of photographs and posters and didn’t think much about it, other than it was cool. Some time later, he was looking at Jim Marshall’s famous pictures from the Beatles’ last live concert, at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park on Aug. 29, 1966, when he realized they were wearing the same patterned shirts they have on in the tiny images on the contact sheet.

“It’s definitely from that last show,” says the 63-year-old Beatles lover and co details

A long lost Beatles demo disc sent to Cilla Black has been rediscovered 52 years later.

Black had a UK Top 10 hit with the Lennon-McCartney penned It's for You in 1964 which was produced by George Martin at Abbey Road Studios. The song peaked at number 7 in the charts but Paul McCartney had earlier that year recorded his own version, clocking in at just under two minutes, on a 7 inch Dick James demo disc and wanted Black to listen to it. The acetate was delivered to the London Palladium where Black was performing at the time but its whereabouts since then had been unclear, with it thought to have been lost or destroyed.

The disc has now re-emerged after a relative of Black, who died last year, came across a brown envelope which had the words "It's For You" hand-written on the front and Cilla Black's name underneath. They assumed that it was a copy of her hit record and brought it in with other items to be valued at The Beatles Shop in Mathew Street, Liverpool.

Stephen Bailey, who has managed the shop for 31 years, said they decided to play what they thought were 21 demo discs by Black.

Mr Bailey said: "We got to the last one and as soon as I heard it I thought 'Oh God, that's not Cilla Black it's details

In 1964, the year of the Beatles’ first Toronto concert, the band was playing the peppy ’60s pop of A Hard Day’s Night. By their last local gig, just two years later, they’d evolved to the stranger, more psychedelic sounds of Revolver. Toronto had changed, too: it had a new City Hall, a second subway line, freshly built expressways and all matter of upward and outward growth.

This year, Wayne Reeves, Toronto’s chief curator of museums and heritage services, set out to mark the 50th anniversary of that final show. He didn’t want to just tell the story of a band; he wanted to throw back to the spirit of the city when it last hosted the Fab Four. He asked three photographers—Boris Spremo, John Rowlands and Lynn Ball—to dive into their personal archives, and he combed through thousands of negatives in search of never-seen images. The resulting exhibit, When the Beatles Rocked Toronto (on now through Nov. 12 at the Market Gallery), features three rooms of pictures, posters and other memorabilia. We asked Reeves to share the stories behind some of the shots he unearthed.

“Photographer Lynn Ball worked out of Ottawa, so he captured a lot of Canada’s political details

It’s slightly discombobulating hearing Stella McCartney talk about the challenges of engaging with young people. Can it really be that much of a stretch? Then I remember she’s 44.

Like her dad, Macca, there’s an eternally youthful Tiggerish-ness to her. Is it the vulnerable cast to those cartoonishly large, occasionally hurt-looking eyes? The quick bounce back? The apple cheeks? The stylishly sporty silk track pants, worn with men’s brogues? ‘Flat-fronted, elasticated waist, ribbed hems,’ she enumerates helpfully. ‘I practically live in them at the moment.’

There’s a bit of shoulder robing going on as well, with a tangerine cashmere coat, a lightly tanned, smooth face (does she, doesn’t she? I don’t know, and it seems rude to ask). Whatever she’s doing, it’s all working. She looks elegantly modern.

There’s also the girlish voice, somewhat at odds with some of her weightier, chewier utterances. When she tells me about the way she deals with some of her five- and nine-year-old daughters’ more controversial clothes choices (‘I say to them, “Explain to me what is it you like about that?”’), she s details

For six years, Josh Wakely couldn’t shake his vision of five happy-go-lucky bugs belting out Beatles’ tunes from his mind. So much so that when the WAAPA graduate and award-winning filmmaker relocated to the US with his wife, it became a full-time job trying to convince TV and music executives that the concept for his animated children’s series, Beat Bugs, was a winner.

But as the years rolled by, Wakely’s idea struggled to gain traction. It was during this time that he became a first-time father to Ethan, now 21/2, having also broken many promises to his wife. “I said to my wife after I’d sold screen plays in America ‘Look I want to have a crack at pursuing this right. I think it’s going to take six months, would you be OK with that’,” he recalls. “And then it turned into a year, and about a year-a-half in, when I should have given up, it started to seem like it could be a possibility. “I had my son Ethan and we had run out of money and it seemed like it wasn’t going to happen. But I didn’t want to be that guy who had almost got the Beatles rights.”

Given the series — which centres on five insect friends Jay, Kumi, C details

The history of rock and roll is littered with decisive behind-the-scenes figures whose names have remained in the liner notes of history, who have never been given their rightful due outside of the industry. They are the producers, engineers, songwriters, managers, bodyguards, hanger-ons and muses who helped inspire, create, organize and handle the greatest popular artists of the 20th century. Jack Douglas is one such pivotal figure—a humble record producer who helped guide the likes of John Lennon, Aerosmith, and countless others.

Over the course of his career in the music industry, Douglas partied with The Who and contributed to Miles Davis projects; he became a go-to producer at The Record Plant in the '70s with Patti Smith, Blue Öyster Cult, the New York Dolls, and Cheap Trick (who he helped discover). He co-wrote some seminal Aerosmith songs (including their hit "Kings and Queens") when they were at their most drugged out, earning the nickname of "the sixth member" of the band. Deeply influenced by The Beatles as a kid, he ended up having a long friendship and working relationship with Lennon, co-producing several of his solo albums. He was also one of the last people to see Lennon the night he was kille details

A little bit of Hollywood flair came to Cayuga County on Saturday when the actors, writers and producers of the upcoming feature film "The Lennon Report" descended on the Merry-Go-Round Playhouse in true celebrity fashion.

Arriving in limousines and walking the red carpet that led into the theater, each celebrity stopped for photos and to chat with eagerly awaiting fans. "Auburn is such a kind and generous community," said actress Karen Tsen Lee, who has appeared in "Law and Order SVU" and "House of Cards." "I just love the lakes and the gorgeous scenery."

Lee plays the part of Yoko Ono in the film that portrays the real and unedited version of the events that happened the night John Lennon was murdered. "It's such an honor to be a part of the film that will correct history and tell the real version of what happened that fateful evening," she said. "It's about the first responders who were on the scene. The real first responders that have been overlooked for all these years."

The movie focuses on the events that occurred the night Lennon was killed as seen through the eyes of the people who who were there. The people who desperately tried to save the life of one of popular music's beloved icons. "This is details

At the grand old age of 74, Sir Paul McCartney is a national treasure, and rightly lauded after writing some of the most memorable pop hits of all time. But as he embarks on yet another gruelling tour, some fans are beginning to question whether he needs help – with hitting the high notes. Scathing posts on internet forums have accused the star of ruining Beatles classics during his current One On One tour of the US.

Sources on the tour have also told The Mail on Sunday that McCartney’s weakening voice now has to be concealed by his backing group and other band members in the sound mix – and he has been urged to sing in a lower key. 

On one forum, a fan asks: ‘Would you rather have him touring all the time or saving his voice and making records more regularly?’ Another writes: ‘Yes, touring is ruining his voice (along with ageing) and, selfishly, I personally wish he’d take more care of it, rest up and save it for future recordings.’ A third says: ‘I think age and all those years of smoking… did more damage to his voice than anything else.’ Another suggests: ‘What I find distracting in his voice is his shortness of breath.’ A sou details

What if we told you someone recently paid nearly $15,000 for a handwritten letter? Sounds insane, right? But what if you we told you it was penned by Sir Paul McCartney and addressed to the late, great Prince?

According to Rolling Stone, someone purchased such an item for $14,822 at Boston’s RR Auction. Which is a hefty sum, no doubt, but not too shocking when you consider just how legendary both McCartney and Prince are.

So what did the letter say exactly? Well, McCartney begins with “Dear Princely person,” and then goes on to ask the Purple One for his help in making the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts a reality. Though the letter is undated, it’s likely this letter was written in the early- to mid-‘80s, as McCartney refers to the 1981 Toxeth riots as an event that only took place “a few years ago.” He writes about his mission to bring a Fame-type institute to his hometown, but would need to secure donations in order to make it happen. He also invites Prince to teach at the school once it was up and running.

The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts opened its doors about 20 years ago; however, it’s unclear if Prince contributed to its launch. details

After The Beatles had broken up in the 1970s the former bandmates all went on to release solo music. While some of their solo offerings have become iconic such as “Imagine” by John Lennon, “Live and Let Die” by Paul McCartney, and “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)” by George Harrison, it is Ringo’s solo work that is grossly overlooked.

Back Off Boogaloo was Ringo’s follow up to his 1971 hit It Don’t Come Easy. It was released as a single only until he re-recorded the track for his 1981 album Stop and Smell the Roses. Back off Boogaloo is a tribute song to Ringo’s long-time friend Marc Bolan, who was the lead singer and guitarist for the glam rock back T. Rex. Ringo explained on the program VH1 Storytellers that Marc “was an energised guy. He used to speak: ‘Back off boogaloo … ooh you, boogaloo.’ ‘Do you want some potatoes?’ ‘Ooh you, boogaloo!'”

Many critics and music commenters think that there are darker meanings to Back Off Boogaloo and that the track was a targeted attack on his former bandmate Paul McCartney. This theory stems from Ringo’s public criticism of Paul’s solo albums. The details