Beatles News
George Harrison discussed Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed. The original version of the track was not a hit.
A live version of the track was an international success.
George Harrison discussed his opinion of Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” and the song’s parent album. Subsequently, he discussed his attitude towards music in general. Notably, Paul McCartney explained why he always performs the tune during his live performances.
The book George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters features an interview from 1970. He was asked what he thought about Paul’s debut solo album, McCartney. “I thought ‘That Would be Something’ and ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ are great and everything else I think is fair,” he revealed.
George discussed his opinion of the album as a whole. “It’s quite good but a little disappointing,” he added. “But I don’t know — maybe I shouldn’t be disappointed. It’s best not to expect anything and then everything is bonus.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
A new mosaic dedicated to the late Beatle John Lennon will soon be open to the public.
The Salvation Army’s Strawberry Field, based in Woolton, has released pictures of the monument which is inspired by the ‘Imagine’ mosaic in Central Park’s Strawberry Fields in New York.
The city’s replica measures 6.4 metres in diameter - larger than its American cousin - and covers the entire floor of the Strawberry Field bandstand. It is made up of 390,000 tiles.
The mosaic was made from selected marble and pieced together by four expert artists, taking over 15 weeks to make with each piece being laid onto the resin backing by hand.
Liverpool-based father and son tiling company, Eye of the Tiler Ltd, pieced together and installed the mosaic on the floor of the bandstand.
Influenced by ancient Greco-Roman designs, the ‘Imagine’ mosaic in New York is made out of black and white marble by Italian craftsmen and was donated to the city by the Mayor of Naples, Italy in 1984.
The US-based company, Mozaico Art, which specialises in Italian-style mosaics, were commissioned by Orange Amplification on behalf of Strawberry Field to create the Liverpool installation.
Source: Paul McAuley/liverpoolecho.co.uk
Paul McCartney’s photographs will be displayed at London’s National Portrait Gallery in an exhibition Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm from June 28 to October 1. McCartney’s 35mm images document the Beatles’ travels from that era. The exhibition coincides with the June release of a photo book featuring the same work.
“Looking at these photos now, decades after they were taken, I find there’s a sort of innocence about them,” Paul McCartney said in a statement. “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 for their reopening after a lengthy renovation is humbling yet also astonishing—I’m looking forward to seeing them on the walls, 60 years on.”
Source: Evan Minsker/ca.finance.yahoo.com
Whether he meant to or not, Ringo Starr often came across as the most easy-going of The Beatles. That might be why he played on many of the best solo Fab Four songs that featured former bandmates. Yet much of that work came in his 20s and 30s. Ringo found easygoing peace in a spiritual situation once he reached his 50s, and it makes sense it took that long.
He grew up in soccer-obsessed England, spent time living in temperate Monaco, and now resides in Los Angeles’ mild climate. Still, Ringo has a passion for skiing.
The drummer joined his Beatles bandmates and meditated with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India in early 1968. In his book Postcards From the Boys, Ringo said he found a spiritual situation on the slopes decades later:
Ringo found peace on the mountains in middle age, and it all makes sense when you look at his life.Ringo said skiing proved to be a peaceful spiritual situation when he was 50. When you view his life as a whole, it makes sense it took that long.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
In 2001, George Harrison died of cancer, prompting an outpouring of tributes from his fellow musicians. In his prolific career, Harrison came into contact with hundreds of different artists. Here are seven who spoke about Harrison after his death.Harrison and Yoko Ono had a complicated relationship during his lifetime, but she offered a statement in tribute to her late husband’s bandmate.“George has given so much to us in his lifetime and he continues to do so even after his passing with his music, his wit and his wisdom,” she said, per ABC. “His life was magical and we felt we had shared a little bit of it by knowing him. Thank you George. It was grand knowing you.”
Harrison and Michael Jackson were on the radio show Roundtable together in 1979 to review new music. After Harrison’s death, Jackson issued a statement calling the former Beatle an inspiration.
“The world has lost a great spirit in George Harrison, a great musician, songwriter, and friend,” he said, per Billboard. “He was an inspiration to me, and I will miss him a great deal.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
The Beatles didn't want to spend time on George Harrison's song so they locked it away and forgot about it for almost 30 years. The Quiet Beatle himself admitted he really enjoyed the track. When The Beatles were composing their albums through the decades, George Harrison always fell short when the track listing was finalised. Because John Lennon and Paul McCartney were the primary songwriters for the Fab Four, Harrison and Ringo Starr only had a handful of their tracks included on their records. When The Beatles ventured to India in 1968, Harrison penned one long-forgotten track that the band simply did not want to work with.
Harrison wrote Not Guilty in 1968 while on a trip with the rest of his band.
He wrote both the music and lyrics, and painstakingly perfected the song to the best of his ability - but he couldn't get it exactly right.
Not Guilty was reportedly recorded and re-recorded just over 100 times, but the Fab Four simply "couldn't find a place for it".
Source: Callum Crumlish/express.co.uk
Not for nothing is George Martin frequently referred to as ‘the fifth Beatle’. Yes, he was the band’s producer, but that title alone doesn’t do justice to the level of involvement he had on the band’s records, as documented in this recently published video from David Bennett.
Here, Bennett runs through the 27 Beatles songs that he believes George Martin contributed the most to. First up, he deals with his keyboard performances, which came when Lennon and McCartney needed someone who could play the kind of intricate parts that were beyond them. That’s why you hear Martin on songs such as Lovely Rita, Good Day Sunshine and, particularly memorably, In My Life.
Asked to write a piano solo for the song, Martin soon realised that the one he’d composed was too difficult to play at the tempo required. So, he used the ‘wound-up piano’ recording technique that had served him well when he worked with Billy J Kramer.
Source: Ben Rogerson/news.yahoo.com
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After two years with The Beatles, drummer Pete Best’s time with the band came to an abrupt end. Not long before the band got their first No. 1 hit, they fired Best and replaced him with Ringo Starr. A number of people who were tangentially attached to The Beatles wrote books about them or sold their stories to news publications. Best resisted doing this for years.
In the early days of The Beatles, they worked with several different drummers. When one drummer, Norman Chapman, had to leave the group for the National Service, they found themselves without a drummer ahead of their residency in Hamburg, Germany. Luckily, Best was looking for a job.
His band was about to break up, so Paul McCartney called Best to ask if he wanted to join them for the trip. Best agreed, and he went on to play with the band for the next two years.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Did you know “A Taste of Honey” (from the Beatles’ 1963 debut record, “Please Please Me”) wasn’t originally a Beatles song? It’s a cover of the Lenny Welch version of the song written by Bobby Scott and Ric Marlow for the 1960 Broadway version of the 1958 play of the same name (which was also turned into a 1961 movie). Honey was later mentioned numerous times in the song “Honey Pie” off of the 1968 album “The Beatles” — a.k.a. “The White Album.”The Beatles’ adult beverage of choice was clearly wine — at least when it came to song lyrics. We recall at least four mentions of wine: “A Taste of Honey” (“A taste of honey / Tasting much sweeter / Than wine”), “Norwegian Wood” (“I sat on a rug biding my time / Drinking her wine”), “When I’m Sixty-Four” (“Will you still be sending me a Valentine? / Birthday greetings bottle of wine”), and “Her Majesty” (“I wanna tell her that I love her a lot / But I gotta get a belly full of wine”).
Source: Matt Sulem/yardbarker.com
An archive of unseen photographs of The Beatles on tour at the height of Beatlemania have sold at auction for a hammer price of £5,000.
The behind-the-scenes pictures were taken during the band's 1965 US tour. They capture the Fab Four on stage, at press conferences as well as during the filming of the famous Ed Sullivan Show.
Dan Hampson, Omega Auctions manager, said there had been "unprecedented interest" ahead of the specialist Beatles memorabilia auction. The collection, which was sold with full copyright, consisted of 38 original prints, 12 rolls of film and colour transparencies, all taken in 1964 and 1965.
Pictures of screaming fans at the 1965 Shea Stadium concert featured in the collection. It also included pictures from the 1965 Shea Stadium concert, where the noise of some 55,000 fans was said to be so deafening neither the band nor the crowd could hear a note of what was being played on stage.
Source:BBC News
