Beatles News

Paul McCartney strums an acoustic guitar on a sofa in his London office, humming to himself as he tries to recall a melody from his adolescence – one of the first, never-recorded songs he wrote with his teenage friend John Lennon, on their way to starting the Beatles in Liverpool. "It was like …" McCartney says, then hits a rockabilly rhythm on his guitar and sings in a familiar, robust voice: "They said our love was just fun/The day that our friendship begun/There's no blue moon that I can see/There's never been in history/Because our love was just fun."

"'Just Fun,'" McCartney says, announcing the title proudly. "I had a little school-exercise book where I wrote those lyrics down. And in the top right-hand corner of the page, I put 'A Lennon-McCartney original.' It was humble beginnings," he admits. "We developed from that."

It's an extraordinary moment – but McCartney, 74 and currently on his latest tour of American arenas and stadiums, is never far from a performance.

Over two long interviews – first in London, then a week later in Philadelphia, backstage before a concert – McCartney often bursts into song to make a point: hitting chords from another of his teenage tune details

James Liverani was invited onstage during the Beatles legend's soundcheck on Sunday in New Jersey.

James Liverani still can't talk about it without getting emotional. On Sunday, at the Paul McCartney concert at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, he was invited up onstage to play a song with the former Beatle during the pre-show soundcheck. A fan of the Beatles legend all his life who attended his first McCartney show at age 3, Liverani says he still can't believe it. “There's no words to describe that,” he said.

And the love of McCartney and his music runs in the family. “My dad, Tom, has been at every American tour since '76 and me since '90,” he said.

Before going to this show, James Liverani -- who teaches music to children at Friends Academy on Long Island -- told his dad he would love to play a song with his idol. Since McCartney usually invites select fans up onstage at his shows, Liverani thought of a way to get McCartney's attention. “My dad wrote a sign that said, 'My son would be the coolest music teacher if he could play with his idol.' Mine just said 'Music Teacher' with a piece of sheet music on it.”

The two went to the soundcheck and details

Producer Giles Martin is a man unsatisfied with perfection. As musical director for the Beatles' Love production, it was his radical idea a decade ago to create mashups of the band's most beloved songs as the vibrant, psychedelic soundtrack for a Las Vegas stage show performed by the acrobats of Cirque du Soleil. He produced the music for the original show and soundtrack album with his late father, Beatles producer George Martin.

In the years since, Giles Martin has become the next-generation guardian of the Beatles catalog. Last year, he remastered 1+, the expanded Beatles compilation album. He also worked on Martin Scorsese's George Harrison documentary All Things Must Pass, remixed and remastered the upcoming reissue of 1977's The Beatles: Live at the Hollywood Bowl, and is again at the mixing desk for Ron Howard's new documentary on the band's touring years, The Beatles: Eight Days a Week. He also produced Paul McCartney's last album, 2013's New.

In July, a revamped Love officially premiered at the Mirage Hotel and Casino with surviving Beatles McCartney and Ringo Starr in the audience. "Remixing and re-cutting the entire show is one of those things I thought I should do, because if you can make things bette details

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band marked the Beatles' cultural apex, effectively re-tuning the zeitgeist of Western society in 1967's Summer of Love, but its predecessor – Revolver, released August 5th, 1966 – was the band's biggest musical watershed. Never had the Beatles emerged with such a brace of high-quality songs. Never had Paul McCartney written so well. John Lennon wasn't far behind. Never had a band enmeshed itself so thoroughly with studio wizardry. Never, simply, had a musical collective done so much to change the very concept of how sound could be produced, at the level of sheer fun, and the level of full-on art.

Sgt. Pepper yielded a number of legends about how it was made and what it wrought, while Revolver has always lagged behind in that department, a fact that deserves redressing as this immortal LP turns 50. In that spirit, here are 15 things you might not know about this still-stunning classic.

1. "Yellow Submarine" almost killed John Lennon.

On Wednesday, June 1st, 1966, the Beatles, with a coterie of fellow madcaps including Marianne Faithful, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and George Harrison's wife, Pattie, gathered in Abbey Road's Studio Two to outfit "Yellow S details

The organisers of the 1969 Isle of Wight festival, brothers Ronnie and Ray Foulk, had managed to pull off the amazing coup of getting Bob Dylan to headline. Woodstock, which had taken place two weeks earlier on his doorstep in upstate New York, had tried to persuade him but he’d turned them down. He’d been in semi-retirement for three years after a motorbike accident, and this was his comeback.

In this picture, we’re waiting in the VIP area just below the stage for him to come on; it took about two hours because there were some problems with microphones. The chap sitting next to me is Vernon Warder, my boyfriend of the time. He had long holidays from art college and was working at the festival, doing artwork for the signs on the front of the stage, and helping with security and management. As a result, he had a VIP pass and, being his partner, I got one, too. Otherwise it was £2 for a ticket.

I was aware that Ringo Starr, George Harrison, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were sitting behind us. The talk of the festival was that they might join Dylan on stage. It never happened. I was a huge Beatles fan, but had not seen them live; I kept turning round to look at them. We were about three rows fro details

Ringo Starr has admitted the Beatles would've put their differences to one side and toured again if they were still a band today.

Ringo Starr insists The Beatles would have "got over [their] difficulties" and be touring again if they were still together today. The drummer in the legendary group - who went their separate ways during the final few years of the 60s - believes the 'We Can Work It Out' hitmakers would have put their animosity to one side and gone on the road again, like the Rolling Stones.

When asked if the group would still be touring today, he replied: "We would. We would have gotten over our difficulties and gotten on the road again." The Beatles - also made up of Sir Paul McCartney and the late John Lennon and George Harrison - split in the late 60s following the 1967 death of their manager Brian Epstein which led to financial and legal conflicts.

John and Ringo temporarily left the group during the late 60s and all four members were working on solo projects by 1970, the year when Paul publicly acknowledged the group's break up by announcing he was leaving on April 10. Ringo, 76, admitted the band would've been well paid to go back on tour but they would've done it for the atmosphere rath details

It’s been 50 years since The Beatles rocked Maple Leaf Gardens and to celebrate, Classic Albums Live is recreating the last Beatles show, note for note, cut for cut. They will perform the original set list in its entirety plus tons of other hits. It’s Classic Albums Live: Beatles 1966 at Maple Leaf Gardens in concert with the City of Toronto and Massey Hall.

You may have been one of the lucky souls to witness the spectacle that was the Beatles and undoubtedly your memories of the concert are just as vivid today as John, Paul, George and Ringo were standing in front of you then. Let’s walk down memory lane, all the way back to Wed. Aug. 17, 1966:

Shake It Up Baby - by Christine Dirks

We were 14 and we had everything we needed that summer morning in 1966. There were letters of introduction from the Mayor of Sarnia and the Managing Editor of The Sarnia Observer, a four foot long key to the city which we’d cut from styrofoam, covered in white fabric and trimmed in purple ribbon, a card professing our undying love, and tickets. Red box seats for the afternoon concert. Gold fifth row floor seats for the evening. It was August 17. The Beatles were performing that afternoon and evening at details

The 1976 Robert Redford-Dustin Hoffman film All the President''s Men about the Watergate break-in gave movie viewers an idea of the chilling atmosphere during the years of the Nixon Administration when political opponents were followed by FBI agents and wiretapping of telephones was a regular occurrence.

But it became a real-life drama for John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who became a Nixon Administration target during the era. In early 1972, they hired immigration lawyer Leon Wildes because the government was trying to deport them. The case is fully detailed in Wildes' new book, John Lennon vs. The USA: The Inside Story of the Most Bitterly Contested and Influential Deportation Case in United States History (Ankerwyke Publishing, Aug. 7), with a foreward by his son, Michael, who now manages the firm. It's a book that both Lennon and Ono had asked him to write.

Wildes said that at the time of his introduction to Lennon and Ono that he had no idea who they were. “I had never heard of John Lennon, much less Yoko Ono,” he writes. “While I was vaguely aware of the Beatles, I certainly couldn't name any band members.” His son, Michael, confirmed his dad's pop culture blind spot, saying in a telephone details

THE PHENOMENON WE know as Beatlemania was unprecedented in world history, and it has never been duplicated. True, other popular performers had generated “hysteria” in young girls, from Rudolph Valentino to Frank Sinatra to Elvis Presley. But the public reaction to these charismatic performers was far removed from the kind of mass pathology that the Beatles inspired in both England and America, where uncountable thousands of teenage girls fainted, wept, and peed themselves en masse, even as battalions of police officers herded them behind fences and barricades.

These images have long ago been anaesthetizied into the highlight reel of 1960s nostalgia. But it was all very disconcerting at the time. Journalists compared the sounds made at Beatles concerts to the nerve-shredding cries of pigs being brought to slaughter or the screech that New York City’s subway trains make as they grind along the rails. When the Beatles played Shea Stadium in 1965, The New York Times reported that the crowd’s “immature lungs produced a sound so staggering, so massive, so shrill and sustained that it crossed the lines from enthusiasm into hysteria and soon it was in the classic Greek meaning of the word ‘pa details

A Wirral treasure trove of rock and roll memorabilia - including a suitcase left by Beatle George Harrison - is going under the hammer. More than 40 items, among which are what are thought to be signed photographs of Elvis Presley, the Fab Four and Hollywood legends, are believed to come from a collection at the Fort Perch Rock museum in New Brighton.

They are to be auctioned at the request of the High Court at Clwyd Car Auctions in Ewloe on Monday, after being seized in the last few days. The exact reason for the seizure of the goods is unclear and no-one from the Fort Perch Rock museum could be contacted. One of the lots - believed to be authentic - is a suitcase that was left by George Harrison at a 1962 gig at the Village Hall in Thingwall Road, Irby.

A note attached, from a Mary Newton, says “I was responsible for booking the Beatles to appear ... on Friday 7th September 1962 ... I can confirm that George Harrison left his suitcase behind and despite contact with Brian Epstein’s office it was never collected and has since been in the possession of Mr James Irlam who was a steward on the night.”

By: Marc Waddington

Source: Liverpool Echo

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A merger deal would give Sony full control of the rights to a music publishing giant with millions of songs, including the song catalogue of The Beatles.

The European Commission has cleared a proposed $US750 million ($A986 million) acquisition by Sony of sole control of the Sony/ATV music catalogue owned by the Michael Jackson estate. The merger would give Sony full control of the rights to a music publishing giant with millions of songs, including the song catalogue of The Beatles and music by Bob Dylan, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift.

The commission found that the transaction would have no negative impact on competition in any of the markets for recorded music and music publishing in Europe. In particular, the transaction will not "materially increase Sony's market power" in relation to digital music providers compared to the situation prior to the merger, the commission said. Sony/ATV, a music publishing company, is currently jointly owned and controlled by Sony and the estate of Michael Jackson, who died in 2009.

Sony/ATV is the exclusive administrator of the catalogue of EMI Music Publishing. Warner Music, a competitor to Sony, and Impala, a trade group representing independent music companies, opposed details

Step inside Liverpool's newest homage to The Beatles.

Sgt Peppers on Mathew Street is a new complex, on the same side of the famous street as The Cavern, featuring a bar, restaurant, music venue and upstairs there will be a Beatles themed museum.

The ground floor, which is open now, will be predominantly be a bar and grill with live music played everyday, with a strong Beatles theme - even down to the walrus on the wall.

On the first, second and third floor there will be a Beatles themed museum, featuring new exhibits and rare memorabilia.

Gary Bond, Head of Communications for owners JSM, says: “We have been working very closely with several experts including Rogue Best, Pete Best’s brother. This has led to us sourcing some amazing pieces such as gifts the band received from Elvis Presley as well as some very rare items such as a pair of John’s glasses.

By: Jade Wright

Source: Liverpool Echo

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Is this the greatest album ever made? Here's the facts behind the album celebrating its 50th anniversary.

The Beatles' Revolver celebrates its 50th anniversary this year - an album many consider not just to be the band's greatest, but the greatest record ever made. Released August 5, 1966, Revolver defines the second half of The Beatles' career showing how they made a seismic shift from a singles oriented band into masters of the recording studio. Following on a mere six months from previous album Rubber Soul, Revolver saw the band move away from their beat-pop sound into a world of psychedelia, classical orchestration, tape loops and free-wheeling rock and roll.

Crucially, the album saw George Harrison step forward as a major song-writing force contributing three of the 14 tracks while imbuing the record with his love affair with Indian culture. From the opening riff of Taxman through to closer Tomorrow Never Knows - possibly the most influential track of all-time - Revolver is in a select bunch of contemporary pop albums which can be regarded forever as a timeless classic.

Here's 14 awesome Revolver facts

1. The album artwork won Album Cover Of The Year at the 1966 Grammys

By: Peter Guy details

On this date 45 years ago—Sunday, August 1, 1971—former Beatle George Harrison hosted the world's first-ever grand-scale rock 'n' roll benefit concert, the Concert for Bangladesh, at New York City's Madison Square Garden. Actually, it was two concerts in one; the matinee show took place at 2:30 p.m., followed by a second show at 8. All of it was inspired by Harrison's good friend and mentor, sitar master Ravi Shankar.

In November 1970, a cyclone ravaged East Pakistan and West Bengal, killing 500,000 people and displacing thousands more. The disaster and its aftermath exacerbated tensions between the people of East Pakistan and the Pakistani government, leading to a war in 1971 and, later that year, the creation of Bangladesh.

"I felt I had to do something," Shankar told The Guardian in 2011. "I was in this terrible state of mind when George came to LA for a few days. He saw I was looking so sad, he was really concerned, and so I asked if he could help me. Immediately he called his friends."

The friends Harrison assembled for the shows included fellow former Beatle Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, Leon Russell, Badfinger, bassist Klaus Voormann and guitarist Jesse Ed Davis details

PaulMcCartney.com recently asked the august subject of their site about writing the immortal song, Yesterday, which has been covered by other artists on over 2,500 recorded versions.

"The release of (the album) Pure McCartney got the office thinking how incredible it is that Paul was younger than some of us when he wrote so many of these classic songs, " enthuses the anoynmous contributor to the home page of the official site.

Thus was framed a question which was duly directed at the now 74-year old musician: “Do you ever find your relationship to your own songs altering from what you originally had in mind when you wrote them?”

“Yes, that happens all the time, " replies Macca. "When I wrote Yesterday, I was in my 20s. So my 'yesterdays' covered quite a small period of time.

"Now the significance of the song seems even more striking because of the time that has passed since writing it, and the events that have happened in my life.

"I must admit, I really like this aspect of songwriting and playing.” 

"It fell out of bed," Paul McCartney once declared concerning Yesterday's beginnings. "I had a piano by my bedside, and I must have dreamed it, because I details