This is a mature, fully integrated effort that takes in both the obvious influences that DNA hath wrought, and everything that Lennon has slowly built into his own songwriting craft in the interim — from his tandem opening reading with Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler of a line from the Beatles’ “Baby You’re a Rich Man,” set amidst swooning strings, to his gimlet-eyed philosophizing about community in this unmannered age: “It’s not about right or wrong,” Lennon sings, “or how far down the road we’ve gone: It’s just about holding on.”
Lennon, as his father did before him, is advocating that we pull together, that we love each other as one — even as he qualifies all of it with the song title’s one-word, brutally realistic retort: “Someday.”
Source:Something Else details
At the time, McCartney explained that the breakup was a result of "Personal differences, business differences, musical differences, but most of all because I have a better time with my family."
Remarking on the future of the band, he added, "Temporary or permanent? I don't really know."
For years, many believed that Lennon's wife Yoko Ono was the reason for the band's split. Just last fall, McCartney shot down the idea, saying, "She certainly didn't break the group up, the group was breaking up."
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Source: Huff Post Entertainment Canada
Photo Credit: Getty Images
A collector has paid more than $5,300 on eBay for an ultra-rare early stereo pressing of the Beatles‘ ‘White Album,’ which may — or may not — have once belonged to John Lennon.
Low numbers from the individually sequenced 1968 two-record set, featuring an otherwise blank design created by Richard Hamilton, have become treasured collectors items over the years. The story has always gone that the first four copies were given to members of the Beatles. None of those editions, of course, have ever made their way onto the open market.
Source: Ultimate Classic Rock
Photo Ebay
Included is a poignant handwritten letter by Marilyn Monroe to acting coach Lee Strasberg. There is a reference to suicide is there not? Auction director Marsha Malinowski says there is. Monroe's letter reads, "There is only concentration between the actor and suicide. As soon as I walk into a scene I lose my mental relaxation. My will is weak, but I can't stand anything, I think i'm going crazy."
Malinowski says of Marilyn, "A very troubled soul who was losing her concentration because of her alcohol and barbiturate intake."
Also revealed, a scathing letter John Lennon wrote to Paul and Linda McCartney just before the Beatles breakup in 1970.
There is a lot of profanity sort of sprinkled throughout, but the part we can read without offending reads, "DO YOU REALLY THINK MOST OF TODAY'S ART CAME ABOUT BECAUSE OF THE BEATLES? I DON'T BELIEVE YOU'RE THAT INSANE-PAUL- DO YOU BELIEVE THAT? WHEN YOU STOP BELIEVING IT YOU MIGHT WAKE UP!"
Its creator, apparently dipping into the wonders of Auto-Tune for this version he released in late January, agrees. He says on the video's YouTube page, "I reworked it to minor key, and it became almost entirely new song."
The mashup artist, whose group goes by the name "The Rumbeatles," might have taken an uplifting song and made it sadder.
He added, "Sad, beautiful, melancholic — embodying what all of us feel about this outstanding phenomenon of The Beatles, and the fact that it will never happen again."
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Source: Mashable By: Charlie White
Photo Credit Getty Images, Hulton Archive
The Beatles were just beginning to create the buzz which would later turn into full-blown Beatlemania and took to the stage of the Rialto in Fishergate to a rapturous reception.
Mr Hattersley-Colson, who turned 80 yesterday, was 29 at the time and remembers the band as being friendly and polite.He recalls they arrived by a big Austin Princess car, and stopped for a drink at the Edinburgh Arms.
He said: “They were nice young lads, there were no airs and graces with them. They were ordinary Lancashire lads like me.
“The show was fantastic, it went very well indeed. People who went never forgot it.
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Source: The Press
By: Kate Liptrot
This printed interview appeared on April 9th 1970 as a press release in advance promotional copies of Paul McCartney's first solo album entitled 'McCartney.'
There have long been misconceptions that Paul had written the questions himself. Paul told the Canadian magazine 'Musical Express' in 1982, "That's one thing that really got misunderstood. I had talked to Peter Brown from Apple and asked him what we were going to do about press on the album. I said, 'I really don't feel like doing it, to tell you the truth,' but he told me that we needed to have something. He said, 'I'll give you some questions and you just write out your answers. We'll put it out as a press release.' Well of course, the way it came out looked like it was specially engineered by me." This was also confirmed in Peter Brown's book 'The Love You Make.'
Source: The Beatles Ultimate Experience
Jay Spangler, www.beatle
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Yes, it’s that time of year again, when we sort through all of our receipts and forms and pay more than our fair share to Uncle Sam. As we’ve been trying to figure out just how much we owe, one song in particular has been going through our heads repeatedly, ‘Taxman’ by the Beatles.
Written by George Harrison, ‘Taxman’ kicked off their 1966 album ‘Revolver.’ The lyrics are a scathing comment on Britain’s high rate of taxation. While its opening line “Let me tell you how it will be / Here’s one for you, 19 for me” may seem hyperbolic, it was actually quite true. At the time, the wealthiest in Great Britain were taxed at 83 percent, with a “surtax” that added an extra 15 percent. The surtax was abolished in 1973.
As Harrison, who came from an impoverished background, began to make millions of pounds, he soon found out about the unfairness of these policies and lashed out about them in song.
A presale for VIP packages and tickets for those purchasing with American Express cards will be available starting Tuesday. Another special presale will happen on Thursday for current Memphis Grizzlies’ MVP Season Ticket Holders and recipients of the FedExForum Event Alert email communications.
You can also get an invitation to the presale by connecting with FedExForum via twitter or liking its Facebook page, according to the FedExForum website. The deadline for this presale invitation is Tuesday at noon.
Source: The Commercial Appeal Memphis Tennessee By Bob Mehr
detailsApparently, he had said to his friends, 'Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can't drink anymore,' and then gone to bed and died in his sleep. So I picked up a guitar, started to strum and sing 'Drink to me, drink to my health...', and Dustin was shouting to his wife, 'He's doing it! He's doing it! Come and listen!' It's something that comes naturally to me but he was blown away by it. And that song became Picasso’s Last Words.
The issue of Time magazine was dated 23 April 1973, and the article in question was titled 'Pablo Picasso's Last Days and Final Journey'. Hoffman later described watching McCartney compose the song as "right under childbirth in terms of great events of my life".
The song was the only one to be recorded at Ginger Baker's studio in the Ikeja region of Lagos, Nigeria. Baker had hoped to entice Wings to record more songs at his ARC Studios, but only one session took place.
Sorting out where Julian stands in the Lennon family firmament as he enters his sixth decade is as puzzling a prospect as ever. Just as friendly relations among the surviving ex-Beatles always seemed to be in an on-again, off-again mode, the same holds true for many of the Fab Four's children and past or present spouses and in-laws. The recurring rifts between Julian and his mum Cynthia Lennon on one side, and Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon on the other, represent one of the most intriguing divides of all.
In 2010, at least some of the polluted water seemed to be under the bridge, when Julian opened a photo exhibition and, at the opening night, four people posed for a photo-op that most Beatles fans thought would never happen: brothers Julian and Sean with their mothers Cynthia Lennon and Yoko Ono. Hell, it seemed, had frozen over.
At that point three years ago, reconciliation seemed to be in the air. Julian seemed to be sorry that he had publicly expressed his disdain for how Yoko had handled things over the years. "I think the key point to all of this for me at details

On April 14, 1963, The Beatles first saw The Rolling Stones performing in London's Crawdaddy Club, packed with screaming girls dancing on tabletops.
"It was a match made in heaven, rampant youth colliding," wrote Andrew Loog Oldham, the Stones' first manager and now a Sirius XM deejay, in his 1998 memoir. The lads stayed up until 4 a.m. together. George Harrison lobbied Decca -- still trying to live down the humiliation of spurning the Beatles in 1962 -- to sign the Stones, and Oldham landed the deal. "If Decca's doorman started whistling, they would have signed him," he said.
Frantic to find a song for his new charges, the manager ran into John Lennon and Paul McCartney exiting a taxi, and they gave the Stones "I Wanna Be Your Man" (inferior to their hit "I Want to Hold Your Hand"). Released by the Stones in November 1963, it hit No. 12 on the Briti details
Billboard reports that McCartney’s 1976 live album Wings Over America will be reissued at the end of May.
The original album caused controversy when McCartney switched the songwriting credits on all of the albums five Beatles songs from Lennon-McCartney to McCartney-Lennon.
The album featured The Long And Winding Road, Lady Madonna, I’ve Just Seen A Face, Blackbird and Yesterday all listed as McCartney-Lennon songs. They still listed as McCartney-Lennon songs when the album was reissued on CD in 2002.
Wings Over America features McCartney’s cover of Paul Simon’s Richard Cory and his own Soily, neither of which are available on any other album. The album also featured Wings’ cover of the Moody Blues Go Now with Denny Laine on lead vocals. Laine was a member of The Moody Blues on
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Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon will be performing the John & Yoko Double Fantasy album at the upcoming Meltdown Festival in London.
Yoko is curating the festival and has recruited Boy George, Patti Smith, Iggy & The Stooges and Marianne Faithfull to perform for the 20th anniversary of the festival.
Double Fantasy was John’s comeback album in 1980, after 5 years of being a house-husband and raising Sean. It was also the album John & Yoko had in the charts at the time of John’s death.
Double Fantasy was released on November 17, 1980. John died on December 8, 1980.
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Source: WN/Music
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They were a definite hit with the Norwich gig-goers, with excited fans snapping up the tickets. The queue on the night to get into the Grosvenor Rooms stretched all the way back to the old ABC cinema further up the road.
Half a century on, the Grosvenor Rooms are no more – with a KFC fast food restaurant now on the site instead – but The Beatles’ music continues to be as popular as ever, and to mark the anniversary of their Norwich visit Mark Cousens, from Tasburgh, is organising a tribute night in the city.
He has already booked Them Beatles as the tribute act to the Fab Four, and is now looking for a local support act.
“I grew up listening to The Beatles because of my dad. It was the first music I can remember hearing,” said 29-year-old Mr Cousens.
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Source: Evening News, UK
Photo Credit Bill Smi
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