Beatles News

In 2013, author and historian Jim Berkenstadt (aptly billed as “The Rock and Roll Detective™”) wrenched a musical mystery back into the light in his book The Beatle Who Vanished. It’s the compelling story of Jimmie Nicol, a shy, gifted session drummer who had not yet made the big time. That is, until one day in 1964 when he received a call from Beatles’ producer George Martin, asking if he could fill in for an ailing Ringo Starr for the Beatles’ first World Tour. What??

Nicol wasn’t the first to be approached for this one-off task (he was the third, actually), but he recognized a good opportunity and checked a lot of the boxes for a quick-fix Ringo doppelganger. He was familiar with the Beatles’ playlist. He was adaptable and took direction well. He even sported the imperative mop top and fit into Ringo’s suit, though a bit snugly. He bid his wife and young son farewell and off he went, eager to make rock history with hopes of furthering his burgeoning drumming career.

There’s no question that Nicol came through in fine style while poor Ringo languished in Middlesex University College Hospital with a case of laryngitis and pharyngitis. An introverted bu details

Beatles producer George Martin worked with the band extensively on each of their albums. He got to know the band and their working style well as they grew as artists. While he was typically happy to see their growth, he said they began taking too many creative liberties beginning with one album. He shared why this became a problem for the group.

George Martin said The Beatles lost focus on one album

In 1967, The Beatles pushed the limits of what was possible with an album when they released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They continued to push boundaries with their later albums, which Martin viewed as a problem.

“During Magical Mystery Tour I became conscious that the freedom that we’d achieved in Pepper was getting a little bit over the top, and they weren’t really exerting enough mental discipline in a lot of the recordings,” Martin said in The Beatles Anthology.

Source: imdb.com

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Yoko Ono will be honored Sunday with the Edward MacDowell Medal.

Ono will receive the award for her interdisciplinary work, the second artist to win the MacDowell Medal in that discipline.

The medal ceremony will be held Sunday at 12:15 p.m., and is free and open to the public on the grounds of the artists’ retreat on High Street in Peterborough. The 64th MacDowell Medal will be presented to Ono’s longtime music manager, David Newgarden, MacDowell said. Ono, 91, is not expected to attend the ceremony, a MacDowell spokesperson confirmed.

“There has never been anyone like her; there has never been work like hers. Over some seven decades, she has rewarded eyes, provoked thought, inspired feminists, and defended migrants through works of a wide-ranging imagination,” said author and visual artist Nell Painter, chair of the MacDowell board, in a news release.

Source: The Keene Sentinel

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3 Paul McCartney Songs That Will Bring a Tear To Your Eye

Paul McCartney has many upbeat hits to his name, but he isn’t afraid to let his emotions shine through at times. Find three McCartney songs that are liable to bring a tear to your eye, below.

Meaning Behind “You’re in My Heart' by Rod Stewart and the Famous Girl Who Inspired It

1. “Little Willow”

It can be hard to weather the obstacles in one’s life. They can shake us in unspeakable ways, flip our lives upside down, and change us forever. In the face of those obstacles, McCartney offers us some solace with “Little Willow.” The lyrics are peace incarnate, lulling the listener into a state of understanding and acceptance. Despite (or maybe because of that), there is something very poignant about this song. So poignant, in fact, that the listener might be moved to tears.

Sleep little willow, peace going to follow
Time will heal your wounds
Grow to the heavens, now and forever
Always came too soon

Source: Alex Hopper/americansongwriter.com

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Ringo Starr’s grinning, head-shaking figure flailing away behind his Ludwig drum kit was as much a trademark of the early Fab Four as their collarless jackets and three-part harmonies. In interviews, his deadpan wit was the equal of John Lennon’s more acerbic humour, and the morose persona he presented in the 1964 film A Hard Day’s Night broke just as many female hearts as Paul McCartney’s doe eyes.

All this helped make this practitioner of a craft that had previously been a ticket to a lifetime of standing in the shadows of others the most popular Beatle: sales of “I Love Ringo” badges left those for his three colleagues standing. Such was The Beatles’ stature, it made Starr among the most popular human beings alive.

“What an amazing drummer Ringo Starr is. Few people have ever caught on … but he has the most incredible feel”

However, when it comes to his status as musician, Starr was and is spoken of in terms ranging from dismissive to derisive. While Lennon and McCartney were acclaimed as the greatest songwriters of the twentieth century and George Harrison was recognised as a guitarist and songwriter of considerable talent, the consensus is details

Beatles live albums didn't really used to be a thing. They came off the road in August 1966 and the group's first official concert recording, The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl, wasn't released until 11 years later.

Three Beatles had issued live LPs in the meantime: John Lennon with 1969's Live Peace in Toronto, George Harrison with 1971's The Concert for Bangladesh and Paul McCartney with 1976's Wings Over America. The knockoff Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany 1962 had only arrived a few months before the Hollywood Bowl recordings.

Not much. Then the next decade would see exactly one Beatles live album released – Lennon's posthumous Live in New York City from 1986. But then something incredible happened: Nine concert recordings were released in the '90s, including Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band, McCartney's Tripping the Live Fantastic and the Beatles' Live at the BBC.

That's almost twice as many as arrived in the '60s, '70s and '80s combined. Seven more Beatles live LPs were issued in the 2000s, then five more in the years that have followed. Suddenly, there's now a robust sampling group for the following ranking of Beatles live albums.

As the last surviving Beatles, McCartney details

The full, true story behind the most controversial moment in The Beatles history. The Beatles rarely put a foot wrong in their relatively short, stunning decade together.

They shrugged off the departure of Pete Best, quickly switched up their shocking "butcher cover", and kept most of their feuding under wraps until it all eventually fell apart.

But there was one explosive moment that truly changed absolutely everything for the Fab Four.

“What’d you do? Screw up like The Beatles and say you were bigger than Jesus?" Bart Simpson asked Homer about his dad's barbershop quartet The B-Sharps, proving how the controversy has become so embedded in our culture.

The incident has remained shorthand for The Beatles messing up and maybe the beginning of the end of Beatlemania, in the US at least. But what's the truth about what really happened? Read on to find out.  Did The Beatles really say they were "bigger than Jesus"?

The first myth around The Beatles' Jesus controversy is that the quote attributed to the band was totally mangled. Here's the exact phrasing of what John Lennon said, and the context.

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about th details

Yoko Ono said she had a great deal of respect for Cynthia Lennon. She shared why she thought Cynthia was a strong person.

Yoko Ono and John Lennon began a relationship while he was still married to his first wife, Cynthia Lennon. The affair, of course, did nothing good for the relationship between the two women. When Ono first met Cynthia, though, she said she liked her a great deal. She recognized an innate strength in her that had to be present in order to put up with Lennon.

Cynthia met Ono before she realized she was having an affair with her husband. Ono said Cynthia’s poise impressed her.

“The first time I met her at Kenwood — I thought she was very quiet and sensitive — a nice lady,” Ono said in the book All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines. “She had a nice figure and my feeling was in Liverpool, when he went to art school, I think she was like a different class of chick, you know, rather elegant and graceful, and I think that’s probably what impressed John.”

Ono believed Cynthia’s intelligence had helped her win Lennon over. She also believed that Cynthia’s strength hel details

It’s hard to imagine, with just seven studio albums and a few assorted singles released during his lifetime, that any of John Lennon’s solo work could go essentially forgotten, but the ridiculously underappreciated Mind Games is just that.

Released in the wake of Lennon and wife Yoko Ono’s agitprop Sometime In New York City, which led many fans to wonder what was going on with Lennon—and the always paranoid Nixon Administration to brand Lennon a political enemy and have him followed by the FBI and his phones tapped—Mind Games did respectable sales numbers upon release in 1973, but hardly those befitting a former-Beatle.

“When Mind Games came out, as a fan back then, my initial reaction was of being a little bit disappointed,” recalls Rob Stevens, who has acted as Yoko Ono’s archivist for decades and who worked on the new box set, Mind Games (The Ultimate Collection), out now. “But upon the years passing, what I found was that, in retrospect, it wasn’t the John Lennon I wanted to hear. Because it’s confessional, it’s emotional, it’s asking for forgiveness, it’s giving forgiveness.”

Predating Bob Dylan’s Blood O details

Paul McCartney and John Lennon worked together closely for years. When The Beatles broke up, though, their friendship deteriorated. Lennon and McCartney fought often over business affairs and they could hardly have a conversation without shouting at each other. Lennon began to screen McCartney’s calls, which the latter found very hurtful.

John Lennon would screen Paul McCartney’s calls.

Throughout the 1970s, McCartney reached out to Lennon in an effort to rebuild their relationship. This was made difficult by the fact that Lennon rarely believed it was actually his bandmate on the other end of the phone. He made McCartney answer security screening questions before he agreed to talk to him.

Source: imdb.com

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On 10 July 1964, there was the chord. And while the chord may not have been a new cosmological big bang, it was the sonic equivalent in the pop cultural sense. I’m talking about the ringing, thundering, unlike-any-sound-there-had-ever-been chord that occurs at the start of the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, commencing the album of the same name, which was launched 60 years ago this week. With a single stroke, the Beatles changed the course of western music, and the LP – which was to continue the theme – had barely even begun.

I fell hard for the Beatles in eighth grade, and have written about and pondered them ever since. In church on Sundays I’d spend the hour attempting to rate their albums in my head. Fierce battles were waged. Was Abbey Road making a push for the No 2 spot? Was I prepared to say that Rubber Soul was better than Revolver?

I’ve long known that A Hard Day’s Night was as good an album as the Beatles produced, though I wouldn’t always outwardly admit it, as if holding back on what I understood – which was that it was both perfect and steeped in joy. A euphonic cradle of joy.

We have this tendency to conflate the idea of joy with ha details

In 1972 after The Beatles had broken up John Lennon asked Paul McCartney if he would do a benefit show with Wings, The Stones and Plastic Ono Band.

The new box set edition of Lennon’s ‘Mind Games’ includes the correspondence from John Lennon to Paul McCartney requesting a benefit gig at Madison Square Garden.

“Right on brother and sister! Now what do we do with “The Luck of the Irish” and ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday”? Would you do a Madison Square Garden with Wings, Plastic Ono and Stones? We’ve already talked to Mick. Also in three weeks actually go to Ireland (again possibly with Stones). Lets forget our past and save some people. Good luck anyway, we’re proud of you”.

It was signed ‘Sonny and Cher O’Lennon’.

The event never happened but imagine if it did. John’s current album at the time was ‘Imagine’ with ‘Sometime In New York City’ coming four months later. He also had 1970’s ‘John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band’ album to source from.

McCartney had three solo albums at the time. ‘McCartney’ (1970), ‘Ram’(1971) and Wild Life’ (1971). &lsq details

George Harrison was rarely a provocateur, however, he called his final album Brainwashed. Accusing anyone of being brainwashed is pretty bold! One of George’s British Invasion peers explained the origin of that memorable title. Notably, it had a connection to George’s spiritual views.

Two kindred spirits in the 1960s counterculture were George Harrison and Donovan. Both artists were folk-rockers who explored spirituality through their songs. George’s songs were often expressions of his Hindu faith, whereas Donovan sang about common New Age topics like Atlantis and witchcraft. Both of them were also environmentalists.

During a 2018 interview with Goldmine, the “Mellow Yellow” singer discussed his feelings about the planet and George’s — and what they both learned from the books they read. “That the older generation was destroying the eco-system with no consideration whatsoever for the inner world of plants, for the inner world of children, and they were trying to brainwash the younger generation to follow in their insidious desire for all things materialistic, incl details

Stewart Copeland said the Beatles’ movie Get Back led the Police to re-evaluate their past – and that’s why their 1983 album Synchronicity will return in a 6-disc box set on July 26.

The drummer, along with former colleagues Sting and Andy Summers, have often discussed the interpersonal issues that made some aspects of the band difficult to endure, even though they loved the music that came out of it.

In a new interview with the Guardian, Copeland was asked why Synchronicity was returning at this particular time. “The Police had an epiphany courtesy of the Beatles’ documentary, Get Back,” he replied.

“Each of us learned, in our separate ivory towers, that the final master isn’t in any way diminished by showing the sketches or demos along the way. [Previous album] Ghost in the Machine had taken us into stadiums and then Synchronicity made us even bigger, but the recording sessions were very dark. We beat the crap out of each other. We’ve laughed about it since, but going back into that black hole isn’t something we tended towards.”

He added that it had been “such fun listening to the demos and songs that didn’t make it&r details

"Shake It Up, Baby: The Rise of Beatlemania and the Mayhem of 1963" by Ken McNab

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It was like squashing a cockroach, they said. Put your toe down in one spot, rotate your hips and your ankle, shimmy them shoulders, and snap your fingers to the beat. That’s how you kill a bug, and it’s how you do The Twist — but beware. In the new book "Shake It Up, Baby" by Ken McNab, there are some Beatles you really want around.

The first day of 1963 was remarkable for one thing: Great Britain was in the midst of "an extraordinary polar plunge that would last three long, depressing months." Also on that day, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr arrived on a plane home from Hamburg, "just four nameless faces in the crowd."

They had no idea that this would be the year "when everything changed."

They were still getting used to one another, jostling for control. Their manager, Brian Epstein, was toiling to make the four men famous, constantly calling record companies, landing gigs, booking recording studios — one at which details