Beatles News
There are some who simply assume that George Harrison’s love for Indian music dates from around the time he and the other Beatles went to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s lecture in London, on August 24, 1967. In fact, George’s interest was piqued in April 1965 when The Beatles were filming Help! in April 1965.
“We were waiting to shoot the scene in the restaurant when the guy gets thrown in the soup, and there were a few Indian musicians playing in the background,” Harrison recalled. “I remember picking up the sitar and trying to hold it and thinking, ‘This is a funny sound.’ It was an incidental thing, but somewhere down the line, I began to hear Ravi Shankar's name. The third time I heard it, I thought, ‘This is an odd coincidence.’ And then I talked with David Crosby of The Byrds, and he mentioned the name. I went and bought a Ravi record; I put it on and it hit a certain spot in me that I can't explain, but it seemed very familiar to me. The only way I could describe it was: my intellect didn't know what was going on and yet this other part of me identified with it. It just called on me… A few months elapsed and then I met this guy from the Asian Music Circle organization who said, ‘Oh, Ravi Shankar's gonna come to my house for dinner. Do you want to come too?’”
Source: Richard Havers/ yahoo.com
Over the years, Beatles fans have enjoyed a wealth of programming that they can watch about the band. Documentaries have been made about each member of the band, and series like Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back follow the band through archival footage. Here are several films and series that fans of the Beatles should watch.
When The Beatles: Get Back aired on Disney+, fans had a chance to watch the band write, record, and perform classic songs. For the three-part documentary series, Jackson sifted through hours of footage originally captured for the 1970 documentary Let It Be.
While Let It Be provided audiences with a look into the band’s inevitable breakup, Get Back showed footage of the band enjoying their time together in spite of mounting tensions. Jackson said that he did not want to make the series if it was strictly about The Beatles’ break up.
Source: Emma McKee/Emma McKee
After leaving The Beatles, Paul McCartney had more freedom to do whatever he wanted musically. His solo career and time with Wings are filled with oddball songs that showed McCartney’s willingness to think outside the box and experiment with new sounds. One song from Wings was an intriguing choice for the singer-songwriter, and he labeled it as a “joke,” even though he enjoyed the track. Venus and Mars is the fourth studio album released by Paul McCartney and Wings. The album had massive expectations, following up on the critically acclaimed and commercially successful Band on the Run. While it didn’t receive the same acclaim, it still reached No. 1 on the charts and featured the No. 1 single “Listen to What the Man Said”.The album ends with an odd duo. The second to last track is “Treat Her Gently/Lonely Old People,” which is a track from the perspective of two lonely old people who are sitting at home alone as the day goes by. The last track is “Crossroads,” a cover of the theme song of British soap opera. The soap opera lasted from 1964 to 1988 and was a popular series amongst older viewers. The theme was composed by Tony Hatch and was widely recognizable to British audiences.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
The behind-the-scenes pictures were taken during the band's famous 1965 US tour by musician Alan Holmes, a member of Beatles' support act Sounds Inc.
They capture the Fab Four on stage, at press conferences as well as during the filming of the famous Ed Sullivan Show.
The collection will go under the hammer later this month and is expected to fetch £5,000.
Pictures of screaming fans at the 1965 Shea Stadium concert also feature in the collection
The lot of 38 original prints, 12 rolls of film and colour transparencies, all taken in 1964 and 1965, will be sold with full copyright.
Pictures from the 1965 Shea Stadium concert also feature in the lot, 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.
Mr Holmes never published the images in his lifetime and the collection was passed to a friend following his death.
Source: BBC News/bbc.com
A reporter brought up The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” to John Lennon. John connected the song to George Harrison’s feelings regarding the weather.
“Here Comes the Sun” inspired covers by Booker T. & the M.G.’s, Nina Simone, Cat Stevens, and others.
John Lennon connected The Beatles‘ “Here Comes the Sun” to his own life. In addition, he contrasted it with George Harrison’s living situation. Notably, the song never hit the top 40 in the United States or the United Kingdom.During a 1980 interview with Rolling Stone, John discussed going to see an astrologer. “I remembered that astrologer in London telling me, ‘One day you’ll live abroad,'” he said. “Not because of taxes.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney said his single favorite aspect of The Beatles‘ “Lady Madonna” is the dark recurring phrase, “See how they run.” The line is more complex than anyone can imagine and comes from a subconscious place inside Paul. The singer-songwriter has always known how to juxtapose light and dark, good and bad, in his songs with minimal effort.
Paul McCartney in the recording studio in 1968.
In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul wrote that his mother’s death is something he never got over. He was only fourteen when Mary McCartney died of breast cancer. So, he knows that a song that depicts a “very present, nurturing mother” has got to be influenced by a similar sense of loss, just as “Lady Madonna” does.
“The question about how Lady Madonna manages ‘to feed the rest’ is particularly poignant to me, since you don’t have to be a psychoanalyst to figure out that I myself was one of ‘the rest,'” Paul wrote. He believes he must have felt left out, needing a mother’s love, at the time.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
Like so many of you, Clash sat down to watch Peter Jackson’s incredible Beatles documentary Get Back unsure what to expect – one prevailing factor, however, was the genius of Paul McCartney.
Sifting through the Clash archives, we-revisited a conversation founding editor Simon Harper had with the maestro back in 2009. The occasion was a Beatles re-issue, and the two chewed the fat over some classic Fab Four moments.
Appropriately, the conversation closes with ‘The End’ – the final moment on the final album The Beatles made together. The end point of the medley that climaxes ‘Abbey Road’, it seems to act as a message to the Fab Four themselves – “In the end the love you take / Is equal to the love you make…”
During our conversation with Paul McCartney, he notes that this is a couplet – the same way Shakespeare would tie together some of his most famous plays. “I just thought that was a nice line,” he said modestly. “Someone pointed out to me recently, ‘Ah, it’s a Shakespearean rhyming couplet, which Shakespeare ended all the acts of his plays on.’ But I did study Shakespeare, that was sort of my thing; I got a Literature A-level, which is my only claim to academic fame.”
Source Robin Murray/clashmusic.com
Mike Portnoy touched on The Beatles‘ classic Sergeant Pepper and named Ringo Starr his number-one drummer. He claimed The Beatles wouldn’t have made its releases without Ringo Starr‘s musical skills.
Ringo Starr gained international fame as a member of The Beatles. He joined the band in 1962, replacing their original drummer Pete Best. The drummer played with them until their breakup in 1970. Starr was known for his distinctive drumming style, which was often described as steady and reliable yet also inventive and playful. He contributed vocals on some of The Beatles‘ most beloved songs, such as With a Little Help from My Friends and Yellow Submarine.
On the other hand, released in 1967, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, is often cited as one of the greatest and most influential albums in the history of rock music. The album marked a significant departure from the band’s earlier work. It also features innovative production techniques, such as the use of sound effects, tape loops, and reversed recording.
Source: Muharrem Doğan/metalcastle.net
The Beatles recorded their first-ever song, “In Spite of All the Danger,” on July 14, 1958, a day before John Lennon‘s mother, Julia, died. She was struck by a car.
John Lennon and The Beatles performing around 1960.
In the summer of 1958, The Beatles were called The Quarry Men. The band consisted of John Lennon, Paul, George Harrison, drummer Colin Hanton, and Paul’s school friend, piano player John “Duff” Lowe. The Quarry Men decided they wanted to record their first-ever song.
In his book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul wrote that he and the band went to a little recording studio owned by Percy Phillips in Kensington, Liverpool. Recording something on shellac cost only five pounds, and they split the money.
They rehearsed once and had only one shot recording the single. They chose a cover of Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be the Day” as the A-side. Their “self-penned epic,” “In Spite of All the Danger,” was the B-side. Paul and John had a few songs by then, but Paul admits they weren’t very good. “In Spite of All Danger” was the best.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney claims he almost got his bandmate John Lennon and his second wife, Yoko Ono, to meet before they met at the Indica Gallery. He knew the avant-garde artist before John.
Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and Yoko Ono at the premiere of The Beatles' 'Yellow Submarine' in 1968.
In his book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul said he’d known Yoko since she’d arrived in London in the mid-1960s. Paul met her before John.
One day, Yoko knocked on Paul’s door and said, “We’re collecting manuscripts for John Cage’s birthday. Do you have a manuscript we can have?” Paul said, “We don’t really have manuscripts. We have sort of words on paper, a piece of paper with lyrics on it.” She said, “Yeah, well, that’d be good.”
Paul told Yoko that he didn’t have anything like that with him but added that John might. Paul directed Yoko to John. However, he’s unsure whether Yoko ever picked up on the invitation to see his bandmate. Whether or not she went to see the Beatle, Paul still had some role in how John and Yoko met.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
