Beatles News
We’ve seen lots of Beatlemania photos over the last six decades, from the minute the Fab Four landed at JFK airport in New York City to their pool party in Miami. But we’ve never seen Beatlemania from the inside — until now. The new book Eyes of the Storm, out June 14 (with an accompanying exhibit at London’s National Portrait Gallery), features more than 250 photographs that Paul McCartney took back then, capturing the chaos from the band’s perspective. The rare images range from November 1963 to February 1954, just as the Beatles achieved global superstardom.
“Looking at these photos now, decades after they were taken, I find there’s a sort of innocence about them,” McCartney writes. “Everything was new to us at this point. But I like to think I wouldn’t take them any differently today. They now bring back so many stories, a flood of special memories, which is one of the many reasons I love them all, and know that they will always fire my imagination. The fact that these photographs have been taken by the National Portrait Gallery is humbling yet also astonishing — I’m looking forward to seeing them on the walls, 60 years on.”
Source: Angie Martoccio/rollingstone.com
George Harrison's son, Dhani, appears to have inherited more than his love of music as he stepped out at the Chelsea Flower Show looking almost identical to the late star
The son of George Harrison looks almost identical to The Beatles legend almost 22 years after he passed away.
Dhani Harrison has followed in the footsteps of his famous dad and works as a musician, but appeared to put his job on hold for the day as he appeared at the Chelsea Flower Show.
Attending the event which also saw Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla as well as Princess Alexandra in attendance, Dhani, 44, could have easily been mistaken for his late father.
The Úlfur Resurrection hitmaker was joined by his girlfriend, Mereki Beach, who he has been in a relationship with following the breakdown of his marriage in 2016.
Source: Daniel Bird/mirror.co.uk
Chas Newby, a former bassist for The Beatles, has passed away, as confirmed by the Cavern Club Liverpool music venue. The club expressed their sorrow in a Facebook post, stating that Chas Newby had briefly filled in for The Beatles during a few dates when Stuart Sutcliffe remained in Hamburg.
Additionally, he played with The Quarrymen and was notable for being the first left-handed bass guitarist in The Beatles. The Cavern Club extended their condolences and well wishes to Newby's family.
At the age of 81, Chas Newby, hailing from Blackpool, passed away earlier this week. Often referred to as the "fifth Beatle," he played with the band for a short period in the 1960s while Stuart Sutcliffe focused on his art career.
Source: The Feed/economictimes.indiatimes.com
- Paul McCartney played the guitar solo on a song from The Beatles’ Revolver that he didn’t write.
- He said he played his favorite guitar on that track and The Beatles’ smash hit “Paperback Writer.”
- Revolver was a No. 1 hit in the United States and the United Kingdom for several weeks.
Paul McCartney was asked to name the best guitar solo he ever played. He praised a solo on a track from The Beatles’ Revolver as well as a song from one of his more recent albums. In addition, Paul discussed his favorite guitar.
During a 2020 interview with GQ, Paul was asked to name his best guitar solo. “What immediately comes to mind is the ‘Taxman’ solo,” he said. “I think that’s pretty good.”
That’s an incredible understatement! The solo from “Taxman” helps open up Revolver on an energetic note. It also makes “Taxman” one of The Beatles’ most fun album tracks. While Paul played the solo on “Taxman,” George Harrison is the only credited writer of the song.
Paul also praised one of his more recent songs. “And then I actually did something on my Egypt Station album, which was a whole track of me playing guitar and that was pretty good,” he said. Paul did not name the song in question from his album Egypt Station.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
Ringo Starr’s affability made him well-loved amongst The Beatles and their fans. Before Starr was a part of the group, though, the other Beatles found him more than a little intimidating. He was slightly older than his future bandmates, but his reputation was the point of concern for them. Even John Lennon admitted that he had been afraid of Starr before he knew him.
Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison had been working together for several years by the time Starr joined The Beatles. They had been playing in Hamburg alongside bass player Stuart Sutcliffe and drummer Pete Best. At the same time, Starr was performing in the city with his group, Rory Storm & the Hurricanes. The Beatles got to know Starr, and they all had a similar first impression.
“We started hanging out with them,” Harrison said, per The Beatles Anthology. “I think we’d met Ringo once before, in England. I know we all had the same impression about him: ‘You’d better be careful of him, he looks like trouble.'”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
John Lennon was the most revealing and introspective member of The Beatles. Many of his songs revealed details of his past or brought to life emotions he kept trapped inside. These types of tracks were even more prominent in his solo career. One song he wrote for The Beatles was for his mother, with whom he had a troubled history.
John Lennon was born to Julia and Alfred Lennon on Oct. 9, 1940. His father abandoned him as an infant, leaving him alone with his mother. After receiving complaints from social services, Julia gave custody of John to her sister, Mimi, but the two still had contact. In 1958, a car struck and killed Julia when John was just 17.
The memory of his mother became a creative inspiration for the young singer. While The Beatles were initially a pop-rock band, they later wrote more experimental and sincere music. Many of these songs debuted on The White Album, which featured many songs written individually by every member. One song is “Julia”, which Lennon said he wrote about his mother.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/Ross Tanenbaum
No matter your opinion of Paul McCartney, you can’t deny he’s a prolific songwriter. He’s written more than 1,000 songs in his career, though the real total is probably higher. John Lennon admitted he liked only one of Macca’s Beatles pieces, and the bassist could be just as critical of his own work. Paul was harsh on his song “Live and Let Die,” and he was 100% wrong.
Paul McCartney sitting on a stool playing acoustic guitar during an April 1972 TV special in which he performed the James Bond theme song 'Live and Let Die.'
Wings, Paul’s band after The Beatles, was still relatively new in 1973. The group formed and released their debut album in 1971. The solid follow-up Red Rose Speedway landed in early 1973, and the smash hit Band on the Run followed later that year.
Paul wrote “Live and Let Die” during the 1972 Red Rose Speedway sessions, but it didn’t hit record stores until mid-1973 when the James Bond movie came out. Macca wrote the song quickly after reading the book Live and Let Die, on which the movie was based. Beatles producer George Martin recorded it and composed the orchestral arrangement. Still, Paul still didn’t think much of “Live and Let Die.”
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
During a recent press conference with his All-Starr Band ahead of their tour launch, Starr revealed that he’s working on a new country EP. The project started when legendary singer/songwriter and producer T Bone Burnett sent him a song he couldn’t refuse.
“He sent me, I promise you, one of the most beautiful country songs I’ve heard in a long time,” Starr raved to American Songwriter and other media. “It’s very old school country, it’s beautiful. So I thought, ‘I’m going to make a country EP.’ A lot of my life has changed by the moment that comes into it and then I thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to do that.’ So that’s what I’m doing.”
The former Beatle has been a longtime fan of the genre, so much so that he released his first solo country album, Beaucoups of Blues, in 1970. Recorded in Nashville, the album reached the Top 40 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart. As a member of the Beatles, he was the lead singer on their cover of Buck Owens’ “Act Naturally” and co-wrote the country-leaning 1965 B-side, “What Goes On.”
Source: Cillea Houghton/americansongwriter.com
Two complete sets of Beatles autographs along with snapshots of Sir Paul McCartney and George Harrison will be auctioned. The signatures were collected by two then-teenage fans at gigs in Coventry and Nottingham in 1963.
The snapshots were taken at a stage door in Coventry before the Fab Four took to the stage.Both collections were expected to each fetch up to £4,000 at auction in Lichfield, Staffordshire, on 6 June.
The first set of autographs were collected when the Beatles performed at the Elizabethan Ballroom above the Co-op on Upper Parliament Street in Nottingham.
Patricia Florio's father was the Co-op's chief security manager at the time and she went to the concert with him and got their signatures in her autograph book.
"My grandad got to meet a lot of celebrities in his job and the autograph book is a wonderful piece of memorabilia," Mrs Florio's daughter, Bridget Gray said.
The book is being sold along with other memorabilia from the time including postcards of the Beatles.
The second set was collected by Gwen Payne, 74, when she was 14 and went with friends to the Coventry Theatre on 17 November 1963.
Source: Allen Cook/bbc.com
Paul McCartney was just one fourth of the iconic rock band The Beatles, all of whom rose to fame in the early 1960s and spent about a decade in the spotlight before breaking up. Though the young quartet’s uprising was exciting in the moment, some say it eventually went to their heads, with disagreements ensuing and friendships nearly ending before the band finally decided to call it quits.
Paul McCartney has had plenty of years to reflect on his actions surrounding Beatles fame — one of which included suing the other band members, which he says was the only way he could “save The Beatles.”
The Beatles’ rise to fame was something nobody could have seen coming. The band achieved worldwide recognition so quickly, and with a fan base so obsessive, that the whole movement was dubbed “Beatlemania.” And when the fame didn’t slow down through the 1960s, the bandmates eventually ran into disagreements, with McCartney and Lennon, the band’s two primary songwriters, having a major falling out by 1970.
Source:Julia Mullaney/cheatsheet.com
