Beatles News

Although Abbey Road was an immediate commercial success and reached number one in the UK and US, it received mixed reviews, with some critics describing its music as inauthentic and bemoaning the production’s artificial effects. Many critics now view the album as the Beatles’ best and rank it as one of the greatest albums of all time.

Front cover

1. The title

The original title for the album “Everest” (after a brand of cigarettes smoked by Geoff Emerick, one of the engineers). The packets had a silhouette of Mount Everest on them and The Beatles liked the imagery. However, the idea was dropped as none of The Beatles wanted to travel to Nepal for a cover shoot.

2. Suggestion for the cover shot

Initially, the band intended to take a private plane over to the foothills of Mount Everest to shoot the cover photograph. But as they became ever more impatient to finish the album, Paul McCartney suggested they just go outside, take the photo there and name the album after the street.

Source: The Vintage News

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Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney has backed the Independent’s Give to GOSH appeal with a heartfelt tribute to the generosity of reader and the great work of the hospital’s staff and volunteers. The endorsement from the former member of the Fab Four comes at the start of the final week of the appeal for Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), which has already smashed all previous records for our seasonal appeal by raising more than £3m.

In a video message he has updated his 1967 hit “When I’m Sixty-Four” in honour of Great Ormond Street Hospital.

He said: “This is Paul McCartney here and this is a message on behalf of the Great Ormond Street Hospital. I want to thank everybody who has donated to their latest campaign and has given money to keep this great hospital and the great work it does going.”

Sir Paul has a long history of supporting GOSH, including a paying surprise visit to the wards, performing karaoke sessions with patients and attending the hospital's annual Christmas party for patients.

GOSH chaplain and Beatles fan Jim Linthicum said: “Sir Paul McCartney is a genius as a musician and I have so much respect for him. He transcends the details

Music students from Weston-super-Mare were given the opportunity to perform at one of the world’s most famous recording studios – London’s Abbey Road.

The students, who all study at Weston College, even got the chance to use the ‘John Lennon microphone’ during the project.

The pupils, who are in the second year of their music degrees at the college, were told to write a composition for brass instruments. It had initially seemed a daunting prospect, as some students had no experience of writing music.

Student Grace Luren at first thought she could not do it. But the project gave the students the opportunity to work alongside National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYCO). Grace said: “I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to work with musicians of that calibre. “I’m a singer, and cannot read music, so I thought I would embody a brass instrument. “So I sang it all and pretended to be a trumpet.”

With the help of computer programmes, Grace was able to use her voice to compose music the brass players could play to. Paul Raymond, who teaches the course, said: “Grace showed parts of it to the people who would play them, and the first thing th details

He is rarely seen in public with both daughters simultaneously. But Sir Paul McCartney changed all that when he stepped out with daughters Mary and Stella on Friday evening in central London. The Liverpudlian star, 73, looked delighted to join his glamorous offspring at the BAFTA screening of new film This Beautiful Fantastic. 

Cutting a dapper figure, the Beatles star had clearly dressed to impress for the occasion. Stepping out in a navy blue, pin-striped suit, he matched the ensemble with a classic white shirt and a pair of leather-effect shoes. Sporting brown hair, he looked considerably younger than his years.

Not to be out-done, Mary was also out in force - wearing a conservative, yet trendy, look. This consisted of a pair of fitted, black trousers with a square-neck blouse and a silk jacket, complete with baseball collars and equinn detailing. Scooping her hair up into a classy bun, she struck a dramatic resemblance to her famous father. 

Source: Daily Mail

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All You Need Is Love proves all you need for a terrific night out is a rocking good live band, the sublime talents of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, the comfort and acoustics of the Adelaide Festival Centre and the song writing genius of the greatest band there ever was.

Throw in the considerable singing prowess of four guys clearly enjoying a musical “bromance” and it’s hard to go wrong.

Featuring a catalogue of 30 Beatles songs primarily from their psychedelic period – that have captivated more than one generation – it is all aboard the ‘Mystery Tour’ through to a rousing hand waving encore of Hey Jude.

Ciaran Gribbin, an Irishman brought to Australia to front INXS five years ago, was the standout vocalist in the first half engaging the pack audience with some Irish charm and singing the pants off I Am The Walrus.

Darren Percival and Jackson Thomas, both runners-up in series of The Voice Australia, showed they will be remembered for more that reality TV appearances.

Percival was at his best with Fool On The Hill and Something while Jackson has a sublime voice and handled the tricky Let It Be with star quality.

By: Craig Cook

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FOUNDER OF 2016 RECORDING ACADEMY LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD RECIPIENTS EARTH, WIND & FIRE DIES AT 74

Maurice White, founder of 2016 Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award recipients Earth, Wind & Fire, died Feb. 3 following a lengthy battle with Parkinson's disease. He was 74.

White founded Earth, Wind & Fire in Chicago in 1969 and shared lead vocal duties with Philip Bailey. He served as the supergroup's principal songwriter and producer for classic albums such as 1971's Earth, Wind & Fire, 1975's That's The Way Of The World and 1976's Spirit. White also co-wrote many Earth, Wind & Fire classics, including "September," "Shining Star" and "Let's Groove."

White earned seven GRAMMY wins, including the group's first career win for Best R&B Vocal Performance By A Duo, Group Or Chorus for "Shining Star" for 1975. He won a GRAMMY for Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocal(s) for 1978 for Earth, Wind & Fire's cover of the Beatles' "Got To Get You Into My Life." Earth, Wind & Fire were recently announced as 2016 recipients of The Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award. A special ceremony and concert celebrating this year's Special Merit Award recipients will be held in t details

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the release of “Revolver,” the greatest album by The Beatles, the greatest band of the modern era. Its best song, “For No One,” the best composition by this era’s best songwriter, Paul McCartney, is a 122-second triumph. It starts suddenly. No instrumental introduction to get the ear ready for the melody or the mind ready for the lyrics. We awake in a flash: “Your day breaks / Your mind aches.

It’s a not uncommon trick, this jarring start; perfect for when the writer wants to set a tone from the jump. Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong uses it to establish the punk twitchiness of the melodic marvel “Basket Case.” Squeeze uses it to foreshadow the climactic theme of “Pulling Muscles (From the Shell).” Like McCartney, Kesha (!) uses it in “TiK ToK” to start the day (“Wake up in the morning / Feelin’ like P-Diddy”)&dmash;though, admittedly, to tell about a very different kind of day.

What sets “For No One” apart, though, is the sudden sorrow. The Beatles used a similar approach in Lennon’s superb “Help!” The instant exclamation “Help details

Another Beatles book? You’d be forgiven for thinking there couldn’t possibly be anything left to be written about the Fab Four. Every aspect of their career has been excavated and explored in print so many times. With the exception of Bob Dylan, surely no popular musicians have been subject to such extensive investigation.

However, this latest addition to the canon offers perspective on the band that is as interesting as it is infuriating. Interesting because it considers some of the major legal spats involving the band in their lifetime; infuriating because time after time in Stan Soocher’s obsessively detailed book, one is left with the feeling that as songwriters the Beatles may have had rare talent, but as businessmen they were naive to the point of stupidity.

The book’s strength lies in the ability of its author, an academic and entertainment business attorney, to apply his knowledge of the law to existing files and recently released documentation. Winnowing out irrelevances, he draws some of the remaining threads together into a clearly constructed narrative, which can be read as three simple sub-narratives: the business chaos during the Brian Epstein era; the rise in legal wranglin details

A photograph of the late Beatle George Harrison celebrating his 21st birthday in Los Angeles is expected to attract worldwide attention.

The 1964 colour image shows George, dressed in a blue shirt and grey trousers, opening a huge ‘key to the door’ to celebrate the milestone.

The back of the picture is captioned: ‘George Harrison of the Beatles. 21st birthday party in Los Angeles 1964’. A mystery man can be seen strumming a guitar behind the Liverpool musician.

The lot will go on sale with Suffolk auctioneers Martlesham on February 18 with a catalogue guide price of between £30-£50.

Auctioneer Chris Elmy said: “This picture has travelled a long way from Los Angeles and will, no doubt, continue its journey as there are collectors of Beatles memorabilia all over the world.”

By: Laura Tacey

Source: Liverpool Echo

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With the welcome news that Ringo Starr & His All Star Band are set to play Cross Insurance Center in Bangor on June 8, it’s a good time to assess some of Starr’s greatness. The Beatles would not have been the group we know today without him.

For starters, he completed the group. They truly became The Beatles when Ringo officially joined the band in August 1962, four years after John, Paul and George began playing together. When Ringo accepted the job, the chemical reaction synthesized by the coming together of those precise personalities created a form of divine magic that can never be duplicated.

Ringo: “Every time he (Pete Best, previous Beatles drummer) was sick, they would ask me to sit in.”

George Harrison: “I was the one responsible for getting Ringo in the group. Every time Ringo played with us, the band just really swung then. I did conspire to get Ringo in and talk to John and Paul until they came around to the idea.”

Paul McCartney: “We really started thinking that we needed THE great drummer in Liverpool. And the great drummer in our eyes was this guy called Ringo Starr.”

By: Mike Dow

Source: The Main Edge

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Whisper it quietly but music royalty Sir Paul McCartney may put in an appearance at this year's Concert At The Kings in All Cannings, near Devizes. There have been rumours that McCartney would take to the stage at Rock Against Cancer since it was first held five years ago. But this time co-organiser John 'Grubby' Callis believes it could happen. And as Grubby is McCartney's sound engineer he should know. He said on Friday: "He has the date and he has promised me that he will appear one year. This is our fifth anniversary so why not this year. But I doubt we will know until very near the time."

Last year McCartney did not make it to All Cannings to join the likes of Lindisfarne and Squeeze but Mr Callis revealed he had made a substantial donation to the event which raises money for a number of cancer charities and local good causes.

The first four concerts have raised a total of more than £112,000 and there are high hopes that this year's on May 21 will be even more successful. It has grown hugely since Mr Callis along with Kings Arms landlord Richard Baulu and Andy Scott guitarist with The Sweet came up with the idea.

By: Joanne Moore

Source: Gazette and Herald

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"Thank you, NME, for this great honour. I accept this as your encouragement for me to keep making my 'Sound of Music'." That’s what Yoko Ono – icon, artist, activist and musician – said of the ‘Lifetime Inspiration Award’ she will pick up the NME Awards with Austin, Texas on February 17. The ceremony will be held the at O2 Academy in Brixton and will see Ono, who turns 83 the day after the event, thanked for the massive impact she’s had on pop culture in the last 50 years, from pioneering contemporary art to inspiring John Lennon, whom she married in 1969. Here are eleven times Yoko Ono helped to shape the face of popular culture forever. 

Grapefruit

Ono’s 1964 art-book Grapefruit is full of instructions and aphorisms such as: “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is a reality.” The messages within the book seem simple, but her real talent lies in the clarity required to achieve that simplicity. When you consider the 140-character nature of Twitter (which Ono’s pretty excellent at), you can see how ahead of her time she was. 

‘Bed-In’

In 1969, Ono and Lennon staged two identical protes details

It's not just budding pop stars Adele has inspired with incredible third album 25, even music legends are following her lead. I can reveal that Paul McCartney is working on new material with producer Greg Kurstin, the mastermind behind her now-iconic single Hello. The Beatles star has songs ready for a new album and, having been so impressed by Adele’s comeback, called on Greg to help him hone them.

A music insider revealed: “Paul loved what Greg did with Adele and knows he can add something special to his record. “He is really embracing the pop direction of his last album and wants to continue in that vein with his new stuff.

“It’s a huge coup as Greg is without doubt the most sought-after producer at the moment. “He was going to produce Paul’s full album but is going to work on a couple of tracks first and they will take it from there.” Last year Adele admitted that without Greg, record-breaking album 25 may never have seen the light of day.

Discussing the moment they came up with Hello during a session in 2013, she said: “This song was a massive breakthrough for me with my writing because it had been pretty slow up to this point.

Source: Th details

THE Beatles may never have made it to Clacton but that doesn’t mean they didn’t leave their mark on the resort. Thirty years after A Hard’s Day’s Night was screened at the now long-lost Odeon, in West Avenue, fan and musician Karl Johnson found himself in a time-warp dating back to the Fab Four’s heyday.

“It was a little disused hotel bedroom at the top of either the Criterion on Pier restaurant, facing the sea, and it was covered from top to bottom in Beatles wallpaper,” said Karl. “There had been a rumour that the Beatles were almost booked to appear at the Princes Theatre in 1964 and this wallpaper had been there since then. “Most of it was still intact, stuck on to the crumbling walls of this Victorian room. “I went there with my dad and we stripped it all off because they were refurbishing it. “It seemed to still be in good condition but once it was removed from the walls the brittle paper just crumbled apart. “We had a hell of a job getting it off the wall. Some of it wouldn’t come off and some of it was damp.”

Dad Derek was an antiques dealer. They saved what they could and mounted it onto cards before sending it off for a details

Get ready for the British Invasion at Henry Ford Museum. Beginning April 30, 2016, The Magical History Tour: A Beatles Memorabilia Exhibition will take visitors on an unprecedented journey of the Fab Four’s ground-breaking career that’s not to be missed. The Magical History Tour offers guests the opportunity to retrace the steps of the Beatles and the way in which they changed the music industry and influenced American pop culture with the best private collection ever assembled, that highlights their formatives years in Liverpool and Hamburg, the screaming fans across the world and goes into the studio for the creation of some of the most innovative music in history.

Fans and visitors will experience the exhibition in a fast-forward journey from birth to fame to breakup and beyond. The robust multi-sensory galleries include:

Beginnings, Influence and Life in Liverpool: Guests will be immersed in the atmosphere of late 50s/early 60s Liverpool. Part of the very stage that supported some of the band’s early shows is on display, as well as instruments, personal letters and photographs, and various documents detailing the growing fame of the Fab Four. These artifacts are incredibly rare, as they com details