I shared the same planet with the Beatles for one year, three months and two days. That was how old I was when John Lennon died, not that I learned that until nearly a decade later. By the time I first encountered the group, courtesy of the movie "Yellow Submarine," it had long since been reduced to a thriving industry and a beloved — but irrevocably gone — part of the past.
We still perform Sophocles' plays and trek to the Egyptian pyramids after thousands of years, so I have no reason to doubt that the Beatles' music will have similar staying power. Just this summer, my wife and I visited Liverpool and took the Magical Mystery Tour bus ride, which guides tourists by the childhood homes of all four Beatles and points out historic points of interest — this street where two of the band members walked to school, for example, or this trail where one of them rode his bike.
The Beatles were not infallible musically (even the most diehard fan can probably name a least favorite song or album) and were a details
John Lewis have released their Christmas advert for 2014 - the tale of Monty The Penguin, with a little help from The Beatles.
The two minute advert Monty's Christmas shows a young boy and his pet penguin, but as the £1m film continues the bird becomes wistful and yearning for a penguin girlfriend.
Come Christmas morning - and thanks to John Lewis of course - his wish is granted.
The action plays out over a soundtrack of The Beatles' Real Love, originally written by John Lennon and now covered by Tom Odell.
The chain, which has a flagship store in Liverpool One, is famous for it's Christmas adverts.
Last year, Lily Allen sang over The Bare and the Hare, a Christmas cartoon, which was credited with boosting sales by as much as 6.9%.
Chrissie Hynde's reverent, heartfelt cover of the Beatles' "Let It Be," which will appear on the upcoming, star-studded Paul McCartney tribute comp The Art of McCartney, is now streaming online. The recording finds the Pretenders frontwoman stretching her delicate voice across lush textures of piano, gospel backup vocals and, at its apex, a full rock band, complete with a bluesy guitar solo; at its most delicate, Hynde sings over a Beatlesesque acoustic guitar part. A behind-the-scenes video revealed that the singer specifically chose "Let It Be,"
which The Wall Street Journal premiered, as her contribution to the comp.
Larry Kane was the only American reporter to travel with the Beatles for every stop on both the 1964 and 1965 North American tours. Being a huge Beatles fan I looked forward to to reading this account with the hope that I would learn something new and thrilling. Unfortunately for the most part, Mr Kane does not deliver.Although this book would be a good read for a beginner or casual fan, it doesn't really contain much new information for this seasoned reader on the subject. Perhaps if Mr. Kane had released his memoirs in a more timely fashion his stories would pack more punch, but since most of these events have already been widely reported in numerous volumes of Beatles books, the best of which in this reviewer's opinion is Peter Brown's 1983 epic The Love You Make, Mr. Kane's revelations are stale.
The author was apparently a young, impressionable, wide eyed innocent when he began traveling with the boys and their entourage in 1964. He seems to this day still tantalized by the idea of John messing around with Jayne Mansfield and Joan Baez. Not to burst your bubble details
LIVERPOOL, England -- They were just another boy band, a gaggle of teenagers with too much energy. They'd meet in the basement of a friend's suburban home, horsing around and playing guitar. One mischievously began carving his name on a wood wall board -- J-O-H -- before being smacked in the head by the friend's mom. He'd finish later, adding the final "N."
Graffiti etched by John Lennon is but one of the curiosities you'll see on tours of the Casbah Coffee Club where the band that became the Beatles got its start in 1959. The friend was former Beatles drummer Pete Best and the mom their first manager, Mona Best, who opened the coffeehouse to give the boys a place to play
Paul McCartney painted the ceiling of one room in a rainbow of colors using cans of leftover paint, says Roag Best, Pete's much younger brother and a Casbah tour guide. It was here, in a space so tiny you can extend your arms and touch both walls, that they set up their equipment.
They were the Quarrymen then, and the details
'Take it with Me' and Bob Dylan's 'Girl From the North Country' as well as Neil Young's 'Needle and the Damage Done' and 'Rockin' in the Free World'.
A teenager named Summer Strawberry Fields Forever by her Beatles-mad dad has been forced to cut it short by a bank for her first card.
The 16 year-old trainee hairdresser went into a local branch to open her first current account.
But staff said her name - the title of a 1967 Fab Four hit - was too long to fit on a debit card.
Summer, who says she likes her name, agreed to cut it short and has been left with her first name and surname Cole She said: "I'm proud of my names and I would never want to change them.
"I know the Beatles details
In honor of Billboard magazine's 120th anniversary on Nov. 1, we're revealing the top 20 Billboard Hot 100 hits from each decade since the 1960s (for a total of 120 songs).
The '60s was the first full decade of rock and roll, and the top twenty singles of the decade reflect a battle between old and new forms. Elvis Presley and Ray Charles, who helped lay the foundation for the explosion of rock and soul in the '50s, each appear on the list; so does the smooth doo-wop of the Four Seasons. Louis Armstrong, the famous jazz musician who had been recording since the 1920s, had one of the biggest hit singles of the '60s.
But the new era arrived quickly. The biggest hit from the decade? Chubby Checker's rock-indebted dance track "The Twist," the only song ever to hit No. 1 in two separate runs (in 1960 and again in 1962, due to its revival in its pop culture). Sounds were changing. The Beatles landed two entries on the top twenty -- an early number, "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," and the expansive "Hey Jude," from later in their career. Soul came on strong at the end of details
LAKEPORT >> The British are coming, the British are coming!
Actually, they already came, sang and conquered.
The British music invasion of the United States that started in 1964 reached the shores of Clear Lake Sunday with a light-hearted yet powerful performance between what many consider the two greatest rock bands of all time.
A battle of the bands live concert between the Beatles and Rolling Stones never happened in real life, but Sunday night at the Soper Reese Theatre in Lakeport, life became surreal.
The theater stage transformed into a time machine as concert-goers were transported back to he psychedelic 1960s of Liverpool and London for an epic live concert battle between Beatles tribute band Abbey Road and Rolling Stones impersonators Jumping Jack Flash.
The concert featured Abbey Road and Jumping Jack Flash each performing three alternating sets. Abbey Road opened with eight Beatles songs from 1963 to 1966, starting with the rocking "She Loves You" and closing with the primal screaming of "Twist and Shout. details
A life-long Beatles fan was chosen to design a unique installation for the new Royal Liverpool Hospital.
Award-winning glass artist Alexander Beleschenko took inspiration from the years he spent listening to his favourite Liverpool band to design the stunning artwork, saying the light reflec
Washington — We’re told that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but what planets do Democratic and Republican supporters in the midterm elections come from?
Culturally speaking, they sometimes hail from completely different worlds, Facebook revealed in a set of charts on Tuesday. Democrats, for instance, groove to the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, and Alicia Keys. Republicans vastly prefer the country scene: Miranda Lambert and her husband, Blake Shelton, as well as the ever popular “king of country,” George Strait.
Recent Beatles Radio Poll
News reports say they can tell how you lean politically by what music you listen to. How Do You Lean Politically?
Left - 42.0%
Middle - 31.9%
Right - 26.0%
Facebook pulled its data from users who “like” the campaign pages of any Democrat or Republican candidate running for governor, the U details
A letter written by John Lennon to the radio and television host Joe Franklin to endorse Yoko Ono's music sold for $28,171, flying past its presale estimate of $15,000-20,000. It went under the hammer at the Marvels of Modern Music sale hosted last Thursday by RR Auction in Massachusetts, Art Daily reports. The two-page handwritten letter is dated December 13, 1971. In it, Lennon makes a passionate case for his wife's musical talents, writing: "I know you're a musician at heart! And especially I know you dig jazz. Well, Yoko's music ain't quite jazz but to help you get off on it, or understand it, please listen to a track on the Yoko/Ono/Plastic Ono Band, called 'AOS,' which was recorded in 1968 (pre Lennon/Beatles!) with Ornette Coleman at Albert Hall London, you could call it free form, anyway Yoko sits in the middle of avant-garde, classic, jazz—and now through me and my music—rock 'n' roll!"
According to New York Daily News, Lennon succeeded in getting Fr details
A PAIR of John Lennon’s iconic glasses, which he lent to a flirty girl who had pinched his bottom during a conga, will go on sale for £25,000. Wendy Baker sat with the late Beatle in a Soho, London, club in 1966. He joked that the bottom pinch had been “lovely” and asked for another. Wendy, now 75, used his “granny” specs to read the menu – and he left without them. Bournemouth-born Wendy said: “It’s hard to imagine someone as cool as John doing the conga, but it happened.”
Darren Julien, who sells the specs in Los Angeles on November 7, said: “It is rare to find a pair of Lennon’s worn glasses.”
Source: The Express, UK
details
For the last 30 years, the Flaming Lips have been one of the predominant torch-carriers to the psychedelic music movement of the ’60s. So it’s fitting that they’d try to tackle the Beatles psychedelic classic “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in its entirety. The band recorded over the last year with a host of different artists like Miley Cyrus, My Morning Jacket, Tegan & Sara, Tool‘s Maynard James Keenan and many more. They’re calling the resulting effort “With a Little Help From My Fwends,” a track-by-track recreation of the 1967 record, with a Flaming Lips twist at just about every turn. The band has done this before. In 2009, they released a cover version of Pink Floyd‘s“Dark Side of the Moon” and this time last year, a recreation of Brit-pop band theStone Roses self-titled 1989 debut. This of course isn’t their only means of making music these days; in 2013, the band released their
details
Researchers who discovered a new species of tarantula in Western Amazonia, Brazil, named it after one of their musical heroes: John Lennon. Fernando Pérez-Miles of the University of the Republic, Uruguay, and Alexandre Bragio Bonaldo and Laura Tavares Miglio, both of Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi in Brazil, named the new tarantula species Bumba lennoni. The proposed genus name, Bumba, is taken from Brazilian theatrical folk tradition of the popular festival called Boi-bumbá ("hit my bull"), which is celebrated annually in north and northeastern Brazil. As for the species name, the researchers explain their choice in a study published in the journal Zookeys: “The specific name is patronymic in honor of John Winston Lennon (1940–1980), the legendary creator of The Beatles, who contributed to make this world a gentler place.”
The new tarantula spe details