Beatles News
Many of The Beatles’ fans were shocked and devastated when the band announced they were splitting up. However, behind the scenes, it was inevitable as tensions between the band members rose. While it’s hard to pinpoint the exact reason why The Beatles called it quits, there are a few songs that hint at their dissolution.
“The Ballad of John and Yoko” was a single released in 1969 that chronicled the events of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s wedding, along with their honeymoon activities that included the infamous “bed-in” peace protests. The track featured only Lennon and Paul McCartney. George Harrison and Ringo Starr didn’t skip the track out of spite but because it felt like a track specifically for Lennon.
While this song didn’t create turmoil within The Beatles, it was a sign that Lennon was becoming more interested in creating music with Yoko rather than his fellow bandmates. In Anthology, producer George Martin said “The Ballad of John and Yoko” was evidence that John Lennon had already “mentally left the group.”
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
John Lennon and May Pang's relationship is the subject of an upcoming documentary.
Premiering on April 13, the documentary "The Last Weekend" will focus on The Beatles member's 18-month romance with his and Yoko Ono's secretary. The film will hit theaters amid Pang's busy photo exhibitions in New York and Philadelphia.
In the documentary's preview, the now-72-year-old artist recounted her time with the late singer, including her refusal of Ono's offer to become Lennon's girlfriend.
In 1973, Pang started working as Lennon and Ono's personal secretary. But she had a more intimate relationship with the "Hey Jude" crooner, although she disapproved of it at first.
Speaking about the scenes in "The Last Weekend" preview, Pang told People how Ono asked her to fill the time she would be away from Lennon because she "wanted time apart." With that, she aimed for Pang to become Lennon's new girlfriend until she comes back.
According to Pang, she respected their marriage so much that she refused to do it. She added that she was already happy being their secretary.
Source: Angeline Sicily/musictimes.com
In 1970, nearly a year after John Lennon left the band, Paul McCartney announced that The Beatles were no longer collaborating. Not long after, McCartney filed a lawsuit against the band. He wanted to take control of the catalog from their manager, Allen Klein. The rest of his bandmates vehemently opposed him in this, but they eventually realized that he was right. Lennon admitted this on this day in 1973.
The Beatles began working with Klein after the death of their longtime manager, Brian Epstein. McCartney had never wanted Klein as their manager, instead pushing for Lee Eastman, his father-in-law. He didn’t trust Klein, so in 1970, he sued the band to regain control.
“The only way for me to save The Beatles and Apple — and to release Get Back by Peter Jackson which allowed us to release Anthology and all these great remasters of all the great Beatles records — was to sue the band,” McCartney told GQ. “If I hadn’t done that, it would have all belonged to Allen Klein. The only way I was given to get us out of that was to do what I did.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
When John Lennon‘s first wife, Cynthia, heard their son, Julian Lennon, sing for the first time following John’s 1980 murder, she had to do a double take. She wasn’t alone. Fans worldwide were stunned when they heard the Beatle’s son sing. Cynthia Lennon was John’s first wife from 1962 to 1968. She knew John before The Beatles were swept up in fame and experienced the most hectic moments of the band’s popularity. So, she got to see many of the behind-the-scenes moments of one of the most important bands in history. Her marriage crumbled in the late 1960s after John started his affair with Yoko Ono. However, she never stopped loving the musician. While he started a new life and solo career in the 1970s, she continued as a designer and raised their son Julian, who eventually pursued a music career like his father.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
Choosing George Harrison‘s best collaborations isn’t easy because there are so many. However, for this list, we kept it to the collaborations that happened in the recording studio only, whether they were on one of George’s tracks or another artist’s. Here are 10 of George’s best collaborations. George used Chinese philosophy to write The Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” In his 1980 memoir, I Me Mine, he explained that he read that everything is relative to everything else in I Ching, the Chinese classic Book of Changes. So, he used it to write a song. He randomly opened a book and saw the words “gently weeps,” and the tune was born. It’s one of George’s best collaborations because he asked Eric Clapton to perform on it. The guitarist was hesitant about playing on a Beatles song, but George’s ego was fine with it. Later, George loved how Clapton performed the song on their 1991 Japanese tour.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney has been one of the most influential figures in the music industry for over six decades. His tenure with The Beatles and his solo career have produced some of the most iconic and timeless music in history, and his legacy continues to inspire new generations of musicians and fans alike. In this article, we will detail the songs that Paul McCartney named his favorites of all time.
McCartney‘s tenure with The Beatles is considered one of the most remarkable musical collaborations in the history of music. Along with John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, McCartney helped revolutionize the music industry and changed the course of music forever. The Beatles‘ innovative and experimental approach to music, coupled with McCartney‘s undeniable talent for songwriting and musical arrangements, led to the creation of timeless classics such as Hey Jude, Let it Be, Yesterday, and Eleanor Rigby.
After the break-up of The Beatles in 1970, McCartney continued his musical journey as a solo artist. He has since released over 25 studio albums, including McCartney, Ram, Band on the Run, Tug of War, and Egypt Station. His solo career has been just as impressive as his work with The Beatles, with many of his songs becoming anthems of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. He has sold over 90 million copies worldwide during his solo career.
Source: Sami Altintas/metalcastle.net
Ringo Starr joined The Beatles significantly later than his bandmates, so he didn’t live through some of their earliest experiences as a group. He also wasn’t on all the songs they recorded, though this continued to happen after he joined the band. For various reasons, Starr was not the drummer on five Beatles songs.
Soon after joining the band, Starr joined them in the studio to record “Love Me Do.” He struggled with timekeeping, though, much to the frustration of producer George Martin. Ultimately, Starr’s version of “Love Me Do” made it on the album, but he wasn’t so lucky with another song.
“They started ‘PS I Love You.’ The other bloke played the drums and I was given the maracas,” Starr said in the book The Beatles: The Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies. “I thought, that’s the end. They’re doing a Pete Best [the drummer Starr replaced] on me.”
Starr explained that while his name is on the song, he played maracas while a session musician played drums.
“When the record came out as a single, my name was on ‘PS I Love You,’ but I was only playing the maracas, the other bloke was on drums,” he said. “But luckily for me, they decided to stick to the first version of ‘Love Me Do,’ the one in which I’m playing drums, so that was okay.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Ringo Starr and John Lennon always had a close friendship. They were the two oldest Beatles members, lived as neighbors, and hung out together after the Fab Four fractured. The drummer was the last Beatle to see John before he died, and Ringo was blown away by his mindset at the time. Years earlier, John’s singing freaked out Ringo, and we understand where the drummer is coming from.
The Beatles split up in 1970, but that didn’t prevent the former bandmates from working together. Ringo played drums on George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass in 1970. He sat at the kit for John’s John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band solo debut the same year. Though used to recording with the bespectacled Beatle, some of John’s behavior in the studio freaked out Ringo, he writes in Postcards From the Boys:
“I can say this now (if he was here, John could tell you), but suddenly we’d be in the middle of a track, and John would just start crying or screaming — which freaked us out at the beginning. But we were always open to whatever anyone was going through, so we just got on with it.”
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison’s “Any Road” draws from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Jefferson Airplane did the same for “White Rabbit.”
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers did the same for “Don’t Come Around Here No More.”
George Harrison‘s “Any Road” is based on a paraphrase of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Specifically, the song was inspired by a conversation between Alice and the Cheshire Cat. Subsequently, the tune became a hit in the United Kingdom but not the United States.
According to the 2021 book War Time: Temporality and the Decline of Western Military Power, the line “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there” from “Any Road” is a paraphrase of Carroll. The line appears to be based on a passage from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, more commonly known as Alice in Wonderland. The passage begins with Alice encountering the Cheshire Cat.
“She was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off,” Carroll wrote. “The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought: still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
While John Lennon and Paul McCartney were in their own little world being one of the greatest songwriting partners in music, George Harrison and Ringo Starr were forging a perfect partnership of their own.
George helped Ringo with classic Beatles songs like “Octopus’s Garden.” Despite the strange time signature of “Here Comes the Sun,” Ringo knew how to enter the song perfectly. The Beatles’ split did not affect their working relationship whatsoever. They continued collaborating as if nothing had happened.
Whenever George asked Ringo to play on one of his songs, he knew the drummer would do his best.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
