Beatles News
Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder's duet 'Ebony and Ivory' was one of the biggest songs of 1982.
"Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony."
At a time when the fear and famine during the apartheid era were rife, and racial tensions closer to home continued to bubble, people certainly didn't live in harmony.
It was this tension which inspired Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder to collaborate on one of the biggest songs of the 1980s: 'Ebony and Ivory'.
The 1982 ballad about racial harmony was an enormous hit, and brought together two of the most iconic artists in the history of pop music.
But why did Macca and Wonder choose to join forces, and how? What was the meaning behind the chart-topper and how was it received?
Source:smoothradio.com
Ringo Starr and his bandmates have taken a break from rehearsing for their first show of the year to field reporters’ questions in a Zoom call, doing all they can to crack each other up while interacting more like old friends than a member of the world's most famous rock band and his latest batch of hired guns.
Rehearsals have been going great as they get reacquainted with the staples of an All-Starr Band performance, from the drummer’s own material to Edgar Winter singing “Free Ride” or Colin Hay dusting off Men at Work’s “Who Can It Be Now?”
“Yesterday, we ran the whole show and I feel ready to rock,” Starr says.
Toto guitarist Steve Lukather says he’s been “having the time of my life in this band, always have.”
Second drummer Gregg Bissonette says they’ve been “having the greatest time playing the greatest songs with the greatest — my drum hero, my dear pal. What a ball. What an honor."
Source: azcentral.com
George Harrison wasn’t afraid of revealing the vulnerabilities and flaws in his music. In 1974, his marriage to Pattie Boyd was unraveling, and he struggled with alcoholism and drugs. While Harrison didn’t speak about this time often, he did write a song that expressed what he went through during this period. Pattie Boyd and George Harrison married in 1966. Boyd experienced Beatlemania’s highs and lows and the band’s eventual downfall. She left Harrison in 1974, but the pair didn’t officially divorce until 1977. She then married Harrison’s friend, Eric Clapton, in 1979. After Harrison and Boyd’s marriage unraveled in 1974, the former Beatle was in a dark place where he dealt with drinking and drug use. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Harrison admitted he went on a “bender” after he split from Boyd, and many of the songs on Dark Horse, including “Simply Shady”, are manifestations of his experience during this period.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
John Lennon didn’t understand The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” when he wrote it. The song is more straightforward than John claimed. The tune appeared on the seminal album Revolver.
John Lennon said he didn’t understand The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” when he wrote it. Subsequently, he said it was up to others to analyze The Beatles’ songs. John put “Tomorrow Never Knows” in the same category as another Fab Four song which is very different.During a 1968 interview with Rolling Stone, was asked about analyses of his songs. “Well, they can take them apart,” he replied. “They can take anything apart. I mean I hit it on all levels, you know. We write lyrics, and I write lyrics that you don’t realize what they mean till after. Especially some of the better songs or some of the more flowing ones, like ‘[I Am the] Walrus.’ The whole first verse was written without any knowledge.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
Many songs by The Beatles include weird outtakes that make their way into the final recording. From a curse word in “Hey Jude” to Ringo Starr’s “blisters on me fingers” exclamation at the end of “Helter Skelter”, it’s amazing how many memorable moments in Beatles’ history happened by accident. One bizarre moment at the end of a Beatles song features Paul McCartney acting like a dog, but it does fit the theme considering the title.
“Hey Bulldog” was released in 1969 on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack. John Lennon wrote the song, but the recording of it was improvisational and free-spirited. The end of the track features a skit where Lennon is talking to a dog, played by McCartney. The dog howls and barks in response to Lennon while the two cackle like hyenas.
In an interview, McCartney said it wasn’t planned, and he just started barking in response to Lennon. It’s a segment he likes because it captures the “spirit of that session.”
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
In 1964, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison prepared to embark on a world tour without Ringo Starr. At this point, Starr had been with The Beatles for two years, but they planned to temporarily replace him. He was in the hospital with tonsillitis and missed part of the tour. Starr felt incredibly hurt by this, but it might have been a small comfort to know that Harrison fought hard to cancel the tour.
While Starr was in the hospital, the rest of the band began working with a stand-in drummer, Jimmy Nichol.
“Ringo missed part of the tour because he was in hospital with tonsillitis,” McCartney said, per The Beatles Anthology. “We couldn’t cancel, so the idea was to get a stand-in. We got Jimmy Nicol, a session drummer from London. He played well — obviously not the same as Ringo, but he covered well.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
A British heart charity is almost $3,000 richer thanks to a rare copy of The Beatles self-titled 1968 album, better known as The White Album.
Natalie Langsford, shop manager of the British Heart Foundation’s Sutton Coldfield branch, tells BBC News a “generous donor” gifted the album to the organization, along with other items. After listing it on eBay, the album brought in over $2,900 for the charity.
So, what made this copy of The White Album worth all that money? Well, it was one of only 10,000 copies of the first version of the record that included a misprint. It was also in good condition and came with all the original inserts, as well as a foldout poster.
The charity’s area manager, Marcie Somel, said they were delighted by the “amazing amount” of money raised by the record, adding, “We were thrilled to have such a rare donation come into our shop.”
Source: 977theriver.com
The Beatles set an impossibly high bar for groups that followed them. They had dozens of top-100 hits during their brief but prolific career, and even when they abandoned songs that didn’t work, they performed well for other artists. Several of The Beatles’ non-album singles became incredibly successful. Let’s look at five of them that went to No. 1.
“Paperback Writer” arrived in May 1966. The tune became an interesting nexus in The Beatles’ sound. It mixed beautiful vocal harmonies that pointed to the group’s not-too-distant past with a biting guitar riff and thundering bass that hinted at the band’s future sonic experimentation.
Paul McCartney said they picked it as the A-side over “Rain” because it was catchier and more immediate. It’s hard to argue with the decision. Still, the more experimental “Rain” — complete with Ringo Starr’s “weird” drum track — held its own, rising to No. 23 during a seven-week stay on the Billboard charts.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
The Beatles and Abbey Road Studios are deeply connected. So much so that the studio was initially EMI Studios but changed its name after Abbey Road was a hit album. However, the fab four did not make a great first impression during their initial recording session at Abbey Road.
The Beatles’ first recording session at Abbey Road Studios occurred on June 6, 1962. While the band gained a small following in the U.K., they had not yet secured a recording contract. At the time, The Beatles consisted of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and drummer Pete Best, as Ringo Starr hadn’t joined yet.
In a 2008 interview with Sound on Sound, engineer Norman Smith, who recorded The Beatles’ first six albums, recalled their first session. He said they did not make a “very good first impression,” mainly because their equipment made it nearly impossible to get any clean sound for a song.
“We heard nothing of John and Paul’s songwriting ability,” Smith said. “They had tiny little Vox amplifiers and speakers, which didn’t create much of a sound at source. I got nothing out of the Beatles’ equipment except for a load of noise, hum, and goodness knows what. Paul’s was about the worst — in those days, we had echo chambers to add onto the reverberation, and I had to raid the Studio 2 echo chamber in order to fix him up with a sound so that we could get something down on tape.”
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
The letter dates back to the time the Beatles were studying meditation in India.
A handwritten letter from Paul McCartney to fellow Beatles bandmate John Lennon and actress Mia Farrow is set to bring in thousands at auction. It will go under the hammer at Ryedale Auctioneers, in North Yorkshire, on 19 and 20 May , along with other collectable items. A viewing of the items will take place on 18 May.
The letter dates back to the time The Beatles were studying meditation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh, India, in the late 1960s. It features Paul McCartney’s signature and comes with a certificate of authenticity from Heroes and Legends.
Handwritten letter from Paul McCartney to fellow Beatles bandmate John Lennon and actress Mia Farrow.
Source: Kian Rains/liverpoolworld.uk
