Beatles News
Paul McCartney famously penned “Hey Jude” for John Lennon’s son, Julian. Subsequently, it became one of the Beatles’ most famous tracks. Even today, decades after its release, it remains a classic and an inspiring anthem in the rock space.
Though McCartney penned this song, Lennon apparently fought for one key lyric to stay in. He marked the line as his favorite in the entire song. Find out which line that is, below.
Hey Jude, don’t make it bad.
Take a sad song and make it better.
Remember to let her into your heart,
Then you can start to make it better.
While McCartney was mocking up what would become “Hey Jude,” Lennon and Yoko Ono gave their two cents on the project–at the request of Macca.
“John and Yoko came to visit and they were right behind me over my right shoulder, standing up, listening to it as I played it to them, and when I got to the line, ‘The movement you need is on your shoulder,’” McCartney once said. “I looked over my shoulder and I said, ‘I’ll change that, it’s a bit crummy. I was just blocking it out,’ and John said, ‘You won’t, you know. That’s the best line in it!’
That’s collaboration,” he continued. “When someone’s that firm about a line that you’re going to junk, and he said, ‘No, keep it in.’ So of course you love that line twice as much because it’s a little stray, it’s a little mutt that you were about to put down and it was reprieved and so it’s more beautiful than ever. I love those words now…”
Source: Alex Hopper/americansongwriter.com
The Beatles may have broken up over half a century ago but now Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Ringo Starr and the estates of the late great John Lennon and George Harrison have made a huge announcement that is 60 years in the making.
For the first time in decades, the Fab Four are bringing their 1964 US albums together for a new mono vinyl box set to celebrate 60 years of Beatlesmania.
Originally compiled for US release between January 1964 and March 1965, seven iconic Beatles albums have been analogue cut for 180-gram audiophile vinyl from their original mono master tapes to release globally on November 22.
Meet The Beatles!, The Beatles’ Second Album, A Hard Day’s Night, Something New, The Beatles’ Story, Beatles ’65 and The Early Beatles have been out of print on vinyl for almost 30 years.
The seven mono albums are being released in a new eight-LP box set titled The Beatles: 1964 US Albums In Mono, with all available individually, except for The Beatles’ Story.
As shared in the Beatles announcement: “On February 7, 1964, scores of screaming, swooning fans gathered at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to catch a glimpse of John, Paul, George and Ringo as The Beatles took their first steps on American soil. Two nights later, on February 9, 73 million viewers in the U.S. and millions more in Canada tuned in to CBS to watch The Beatles make their American television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. In this cultural watershed moment in American history, The Beatles performed five songs on the live broadcast. Beatlemania, already in full, feverish bloom in The Beatles’ native U.K. and developing in the US, exploded with blissful fervour across America and around the world. The British Invasion had begun.”
The Beatles announcement added: “Shortly before The Beatles’ history-making Stateside visit, Capitol Records secured exclusive US rights to release the band’s recordings in a deal with EMI. The storied, already iconic record label rush released Meet The Beatles! on January 20, 1964. The album features 12 tracks drawn largely from the band’s U.K. album With The Beatles (released November 22, 1963). Showcasing the band’s original songwriting, Capitol replaced five cover songs from the U.K. album with three originals: both sides of The Beatle’s first Capitol single (I Want To Hold Your Hand/I Saw Her Standing There) and the latest UK single’s B-side (This Boy). The album hit Number 1 and held the top spot for 11 weeks, launching a hitmaking string of Beatles albums compiled, titled and packaged by Capitol for the American market. By early April, more than 3.6 million Meet The Beatles! albums had been sold, and on the singles front, The Beatles swept the Billboard Hot 100’s top 5 positions on April 4, a stunning chart record that still stands.”
Source: express.co.uk
Mono, an 8LP vinyl box set of Beatles’ albums compiled for U.S. release between January 1964 and March 1965 by Capitol Records and United Artists.
The seven albums (The Beatles’ Story is a double) are as follows:
Meet The Beatles!
The Beatles’ Second Album
A Hard Day’s Night (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Something New
The Beatles’ Story (2LP)
Beatles ’65
The Early Beatles
As is reasonably well known these days, Capitol rushed out many of these records which featured different track listings to any of the UK counterparts, often including what were non-album singles in the UK. This gave American audiences a similar, yet completely different, introduction to the to the Fab Four in th early part of their career. This continued until 1967 when Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was the first album to feature an identical running order on both sides of the Atlantic.
All the albums in the new box set have been analog cut for 180-gram audiophile vinyl from their original mono master tapes. New vinyl lacquers were cut by Kevin Reeves at Nashville’s East Iris Studios. If you need more details, here you go: “These albums were cut for vinyl from the original master tapes using a completely analog signal path and with constant reference to first generation pressings of the original albums. They were made using a Studer A80 master recorder with analog preview & program paths, and an Neumann VMS70 cutting lathe originally installed in Capitol Studios in 1971. This specific all-analog cutting technique allows faithful representation of the full musical range and dynamics present on the original tapes”.
The albums also feature faithfully replicated artwork and new four-panel inserts with essays written by American Beatles historian and author Bruce Spizer. All the records in the box will be available separately, except for The Beatles’ Story
Source: superdeluxeedition.com
In 2000, Beatles nut Mark Stanfield achieved the rare feat of releasing a genuinely good Beatles film. He’s the writer behind Two Of Us, an imaginative exercise that dramatised the legendary night, in 1976, when Paul McCartney visited his formerly estranged pal John Lennon at the latter’s apartment in New York. Directed by Let It Be filmmaker Michael Lindsay-Hogg, it’s become a cult favourite among those in the know.
Now a professor at the University Of Minnesota, Stanfield has reworked the film into a new play starring Barry Sloane (Shameless) as John and Jay Johnson (who played John’s cousin Stan Parkes in biopic Nowhere Boy) as Macca. Partly inspired by the 1981 movie My Dinner With Andre, it gives fascinating insight for Fabs fans, as well as a thought-provoking drama that explores universal ideas about fractured relationships, regret and reconciliation. No: he doesn’t fancy doing one for the Gallagher brothers.
Hi Mark! Of all the Beatles periods, why did you focus on this one in particular?
Mark Stanfield: “Back in the ‘90s, I had seen an interview that Paul did on the Charlie Rose show. I couldn’t help but notice that when they brought up the subject of John, his whole face – his tone of voice, everything – changed. I remember thinking: ‘Wow, that’s underneath all the showbiz, thumbs-up Macca and all that stuff. He’s really sad; he’s really lost someone dear to him.’ I thought: ‘There’s something there.’”
Source: Jordan Bassett/nme.com
Selecting a favorite Beatles track (or tracks) is wholly dependent on the listener’s unique experience and tastes, and John Lennon’s favorite Beatles songs are no exception.
While the Fab Four’s highly public and equally arduous breakup in the late 1960s and early ‘70s might’ve made it seem like the Beatles were irreparably at odds with one another, the musicians were still able to give credit where credit was due—with the odd diss track or sideways comment in an interview, of course.
Lennon’s reputation for saying exactly what was on his mind almost preceded his musical legacy, which is how we’ve come to find which Beatles songs he despised and, conversely, the ones he loved. Let’s take a look at songs that fit in the latter category.
“Help”
John Lennon wrote “Help!” for the 1965 Beatles’ musical comedy of the same name. In a 1980 interview with Playboy, Lennon said, “I didn’t realize it at the time. I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie, but later, I knew I was really crying out for help. It was my fat Elvis period.”
He expressed similar sentiments in a Rolling Stone interview, saying “Help!” was one of his favorite Beatles songs because “I meant it. It’s real. The lyric is as good now as it was then. It is no different, and it makes me feel secure to know that I was aware of myself then. It was just me singing “help,” and I meant it.”
Source: Melanie Davis/americansongwriter.com
Even the eternal optimist Paul McCartney expressed frustration after the fact about Red Rose Speedway, the 1973 album he made with his band Wings. In the chaos of recording and touring, Macca felt that he left behind a better album somewhere on the cutting-room floor.
Still, Red Rose Speedway solidified Wings as a commercial entity after some singles released in 1972 started them in that direction. Here’s a look back at an album that despite McCartney’s misgivings, feels now more like a near-miss than an absolute clunker.
When Paul McCartney decided to start up a band about a year after The Beatles announced their breakup, he dove in without too much forethought. Wings’ debut album (Wild Life) was hustled out in 1971. Considering Macca’s Beatles history, fans expecting something grand and ornate were surprised to find the album sounding somewhat ramshackle and tossed-off.
That was how McCartney had planned it, but critics clearly didn’t accept the album in that spirit. The good news is Wings righted the ship with a series of non-album singles that did well in 1972, at the same time as they were doing a lot of touring to gather chemistry.
While all that was happening, the band was also grabbing whatever studio time they had to make their next record. At this time, Wings consisted of McCartney, his wife Linda, guitarist/vocalist Denny Laine, guitarist Henry McCullough, and drummer Denny Seiwell.
Wings recorded so much they had enough material for a double album. But their label balked, and McCartney apparently didn’t push the matter too hard, settling instead for a single album release. Songs that were left out included ones with Linda and Laine singing lead.
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
Some people deal with interpersonal conflict via fisticuffs, and others do so with art—George Harrison’s “Isn’t It A Pity” places the ex-Beatle firmly in the latter category. Harrison’s iconic track from his 1970 solo release, his first post-Beatles breakup, was his alternative to resorting to violence.
Although Harrison wrote the song years before the Fab Four split, under the shadow of their disunion, Harrison’s “Isn’t It A Pity” took on a whole new context. But through all of its various iterations over the years, the Quiet Beatle’s message of non-violent conflict resolution remained the same. The Inspiration Behind George Harrison’s “Isn’t It A Pity”
George Harrison’s first solo album after the Beatles’ infamously arduous breakup was bursting at the seams with creative inspiration—so much so that Harrison released the first two singles as double A-sides: “Isn’t It A Pity” and “My Sweet Lord.” Both singles quickly became two of Harrison’s most popular tracks that would hold their cultural status for decades to come.
In his 1980 memoir I Me Mine, Harrison explained that “Isn’t It A Pity” is about “whenever a relationship hits a down point—instead of whatever other people do (like breaking each other’s jaws), I wrote a song. It was a chance to realize that if I felt somebody had let me down, then there’s a good chance I was letting someone else down. We all tend to break each other’s hearts, taking and not giving back—isn’t it a pity.”
The lyrics to Harrison’s A-side aren’t particularly verbose, but they pack a big punch. Isn’t it a pity, now, isn’t it a shame how we break each other’s hearts and cause each other pain? He sings repeatedly throughout the song. How we take each other’s love without thinking anymore, forgetting to give back—isn’t it a pity? The song’s message was blatantly universal, and that’s precisely what Harrison set out to do when he first wrote the track.
Source: Melanie Davis/americansongwriter.com
While The Beatles were still together, they all worked on side projects. John Lennon released albums with Yoko Ono, while Paul McCartney and George Harrison both worked on movie soundtracks. Harrison also made an album called Electronic Sound, an avant-garde synthesizer experiment. Ringo Starr released Sentimental Journey two weeks before McCartney released the statement to the press that officially brought an end to the group.
After The Beatles broke up, they all began working on solo projects. Of course, the music press would over-examine the lyrics and pick out where each member of the Fab Four was singing about their former comrades or their situations. Some of these prods were warranted, while others were not. Jabs seemed to go back and forth from album to album until John Lennon and Paul McCartney met up in 1972 and talked about how it would be better for all involved if they stopped taking shots at each other in song. That certainly didn’t stop the press from looking for more underlying meanings in their songs. Let’s take a look at the story behind “Let Me Roll It” by Paul McCartney and Wings.
Source: Jay McDowell/americansongwriter.com
Two rare and unique Beatles memorabilia items, discovered as part of BBC One’s The Travelling Auctioneers, are set to go under the hammer. Autographs from John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr are expected to spark major interest when they go up for auction at The Swan in Tetsworth, near Thame on Monday.
The Travelling Auctioneers, the hit BBC One show with Christian Trevanion as the main presenter, is bringing its auction event to Oxfordshire.
The auction at The Swan will showcase hundreds of unique and high-quality items, offering something for every collector and enthusiast.
From silverware and antique furniture, to vintage 1920s cameras and a variety of jewellery, and Chinese items, the auction promises to be an exciting event. They include an original set of autographs from The Beatles, signed by all four members - John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr.
This one-of-a-kind piece features all four Beatles’ autographs in blue biro on lined paper. It also includes a hand-drawn portrait doodle with an arrow labelled "John Beatle". The reverse contains another portrait doodle, making this item a rare and exciting find for any Beatles collector.
There is also a vintage black-and-white publicity photograph by David Hoffman, personally signed by all four Beatles.
The Fab Four from Liverpool played the Carfax Assembly Room in Oxford in February 1963 but there were other visits too and quite a few strong connections between the band and the county.
The Beatles scored their first number one hit a week later when Please Please Me topped the charts.
Source: Andrew Ffrench/heraldseries.co.uk
When EMI signed a recording contract with The Beatles, it was a new frontier for the band as they went from being on top of the hill in Liverpool to the bottom rung of the ladder in the bigger picture. Rabid fans lining up to see them at the Cavern Club were sure to purchase a new record by their hometown heroes, but nationwide success was not guaranteed. The Beatles regularly made the roughly 225-mile drive to London to record with producer George Martin at Abbey Road Studios before they secured living quarters closer to the musical epicenter.
Just as they had cleaned up their image when Brian Epstein took over as their manager, The Beatles felt a need to behave when they entered the hallowed halls on Abbey Road. The engineers were older and more business-minded than the scruffy musicians from the north who played rock ‘n’ roll music. The Beatles looked at these studio technicians as authority figures who were rarely in the mood for joking around or experimenting with different sounds or techniques. Martin appreciated their sense of humor and allowed the group to push the boundaries of what was acceptable at the time. Of course, it didn’t happen all at once, but as the band found success on the charts, they had a little wider berth to work with.
Whether out of boredom or just orneriness, The Beatles were always thrilled to sneak a lyric past the sensors or break out of the norm of the traditional recording realm. Let’s look at the story behind “Girl” by The Beatles.
Source: Jay McDowell/americansongwriter.com
