Beatles News
With an assist from Paul McCartney the Paralympic Games is starting its 100-day race to the opening ceremony in Paris on Aug. 28. The former Beatle has let “We All Stand Together” be used in an International Paralympic Committee promotional film. It’s the signature tune from an award-winning animated film McCartney wrote and produced 40 years ago. IPC president Andrew Parsons says “Sir Paul really understands what we stand for as a movement and he was so generous to us.” The Paris Paralympics opens Aug. 28 with a ceremony on the Champs-Élysées and Place de la Concorde.
Source: kesq.com
The Beatles: Get Back doc shows the band's final days recording Let It Be and culminates in their iconic rooftop concert.
The series dispels rumors of infighting but doesn't shy away from tensions among the band members.
John Lennon's shift towards activism and McCartney's struggles to keep the band together are highlighted in the documentary.
Peter Jackson's ambitious The Beatles: Get Back documentary series premiered on HBO in 2021. It had a total of three episodes, with eight hours of footage showing how The Beatles' final album Let It Be was made. Much of Get Back's archival footage has been pulled (and restored) directly from Michael Lindsay-Hogg's 1970 documentary about the album's making. Originally conceived as a feature film, The Beatles: Get Back is now dedicated to Hogg's original work, which forms the backbone of Jackson's poignant documentary.
Source: Charles Cameron, Shawn S. Lealos
We’re guessing there are other candidates that can stake a claim, but it’s hard to think off the top of our heads of any band or artist ever having a better recording year than The Beatles did in 1967. Fresh off their decision to cease touring, they focused their energies on the studio and released masterpiece after masterpiece.
We decided to dive into that impressive year and rank the five best songs that the Fab Four delivered in that magical 12-month stretch. See if you agree with our choices.
5. “All You Need Is Love”
Amidst what was an incredibly busy year, The Beatles had to find time to write a song for a satellite television special that would be shown worldwide, since they were Great Britain’s representatives on the show. John Lennon rose to the occasion by delivering the message the world needed to hear, and still does. No, the recording isn’t the most dynamic, since the circumstances forced a kind of simplicity onto it. But that just means that everything gets out of the way so that Lennon can explain how nothing else matters if you have love in tow.
4. “She’s Leaving Home”
“Yesterday” might have paved the way and “Eleanor Rigby” solidified their technique, but, for our money, “She’s Leaving Home” stands as The Beatles’ best-ever borrowing classical music fusion. The story was taken from an item in a newspaper about a teenage runaway, but Paul McCartney (in the verses) and John Lennon (in the refrains as the parents) get to the heart of what makes this family tick, for good and bad. That kind of insight elevates what could have been a routine character sketch into something majestically bittersweet.
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
The ex-wife of former-Beatle Paul McCartney is being sued by her hairstylist for failure to pay for more than a dozen $5,000 haircuts, according to court documents.
Celebrity hairstylist David Miramontes, who goes professionally by the name David Paul, claims that he began providing Heather Mills (pictured at left) haircuts in 2005, during an effort by the former model to revive her career, reports TMZ.com. Mills' moves included appearances on ABC's "Dancing With The Stars."
Source: David Schepp
t must have been quite a heavy load for Ringo Starr to carry as the Beatles changed the course of rock music. Starr has had a front-row seat for it all as the drummer in the band. Starr and Paul McCartney are the remaining live members of the Beatles. They have a deep kinship that was formed back during the active days of the Fab Four.
“Yeah, they know me,” Ringo Starr told AARP. “Paul loves me as much as I love him. He’s the brother I never had. As an only child, suddenly I got three brothers. We looked out for each other. We all went mad at different times. You can’t imagine what it was like, being in the Beatles. It got bigger and crazier.”
He even recalls the first time he heard the band on a record. “We were playing clubs, and then we made a record, Love Me Do. My God, there’s nothing bigger than that, our first vinyl. We found out the BBC was going to play Love Me Do at 2:17, or whatever time it was, and we pulled the car over. ‘Wow! We’re on the radio, man!'”
Source: Joe Rutland
George Harrison is known by many for the profound, questing nature of his songwriting. But he also often displayed a whimsical side that showed that he didn’t ever take himself too seriously. “Crackerbox Palace,” a Top-20 hit for Harrison in 1976, managed to touch on both extremes in his artistic arsenal.
What is the song about? And how did a chance meeting inspire it? Let’s find out about how George Harrison happened upon “Crackerbox Palace.”
George Harrison had formed his label Dark Horse Records in 1974, but wasn’t able to record anything on it until his contract with EMI ran out. 33 1/3, the album Harrison released in 1976 that included “Crackerbox Palace,” would be the first release on the Dark Horse label that would be used exclusively for Harrison releases in the future.
Harrison recorded the album at a studio he had built on his Friar’s Park estate in England. And he served as a host to his bandmates, who actually lived on the grounds while the record was being made. That collegial atmosphere worked its way into the record, one of the gentlest and most good-natured of his career.
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
Songwriting inspiration can come from anywhere – but the realms of sleep are perhaps the most mysterious. It it the subconscious or something more? The not knowing is part of the magic, and dream-inspired songwriting has given birth to some absolute classics.
Whether it's a line, hook, riff or a whole song the writer wakes up to capture before it slips away again, we're here to look at the top 40 songs that owe their existence to 40 winks.
1. Drops Of Jupiter (Tell Me) – Train (Pat Monahan)
The US band's 2001 hit and Grammy-winner Drops Of Jupiter took a deeper dimension for listeners when its genesis was revealed by vocalist Pat Monahan. It was the band's breakthrough hit, but its inspiration came at a bittersweet price.
"I would give it back," Pat Monahan candidly told the Daily Blast in 2022. "I lost my mother that year so that's why the song was written. So I'd give the song back if I could still call my mom but it was a great gift that she gave me."
She came to me in a dream
A gift because Monahan felt that his late mum Patricia was reaching out to him one night. "She came to me in a dream and she said she can do all these things now, including swimming through the planets and coming back with drops of Jupiter in my hair. But I'd rather be there with you – heaven is overrated and you should really pay attention to your life, because this is important."
It wasn't just inspiration for a great song then, it was life advice for Monahan to carry forward with the band. But there was one thing the singer wanted to set straight with any guitarists coming after him after mishearing the 'Man heaven is overrated' line in the chorus.
"When the song came out people thought I was singing 'Van Halen is overrated' so I was getting hate mail like crazy," he told the Daily Blast.
2. Yesterday – The Beatles (Paul McCartney)
The ultimate dream song? It's certainly the most covered one. Paul McCartney stayed with former flame Jane Asher's family in London for three years in the mid-'60s. They allowed him to stay in the upstairs attic room. "Perfect for an artist," the Beatle recalled to Paul Muldoon in the excellent podcast series McCartney: A Life In Lyrics. "And I managed to get a piano in there – a small swan-off piano. I went to sleep one night and dreamed this tune.
When I woke up I thought, 'It's great – I love that tune'
"Somewhere in this dream I heard this tune, and when I woke up I thought, 'It's great – I love that tune'. It was so vivid that the songwriter couldn't pinpoint whether it was an existing song he was recalling from childhood.
Source: Rob Laing/uk.news.yahoo.com
The Beatles were the biggest band of the 20th century, and part of their success came from their abundance of attitude. Some of the band members, notably John Lennon, were quite opinionated and unafraid to share those opinions with a world that was always listening. With that openness to speak their mind came the occasional sour opinion about fellow musicians. And with that, here are three musicians and bands that The Beatles said that they weren’t very fond of.
1. Blood, Sweat & Tears
John Lennon famously said that he rarely ever listened to major artists, notably the top ten artists in the world.
“Only when I’m recording or about to bring something out will I listen [to the top ten],” Lennon said in an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine back in 1971. “Just before I record, I go buy a few albums to see what people are doing. Whether they have improved any, or whether anything happened. And nothing’s really happened”.
Lennon went on to say some pretty strong things about Blood, Sweat & Tears, who were in their heyday at the time.
“I don’t like the Blood, Sweat & Tears sh*t,” said Lennon. “I think all that is bullshit.”
Some believe the animosity came from the fact that the band won a Grammy over The Beatles’ Abbey Road. Regardless, Lennon seemed to believe they were derivative.
2. Neil Young
George Harrison was always the soft-spoken member of The Beatles, but he did have strong opinions about Neil Young at one point. During one 1992 studio session with Harrison, Bob Gildoff was praising Young’s guitar abilities before Harrison interrupted him.
“I’m not a Neil Young fan,” Harrison asserted. “I hate it, yeah I can’t stand it.”
Harrison went on to disparage Young by telling a story about a show The Beatles did with him in which he disliked the way Young was performing.
That being said, Harrison’s opinion was not really shared by other members of The Beatles.
Source: Em Casalena/americansongwriter.com
For a time, John Lennon was the clear frontman of The Beatles. His bandmates looked to him with admiration and media outlets established him as the group’s leader. According to a Beatles associate, this was a position Lennon wanted but could not hold. He grew too lazy as the 1960s wore on.
John Lennon was initially the clear leader of The Beatles
Peter Brown, the personal assistant to Beatles manager Brian Epstein, had a close working relationship with the band for years. While he said he did not play favorites, he primarily communicated with Paul McCartney. McCartney was more invested in the group than his bandmates.
“I could communicate with Paul. I suppose I was closer to him, but I was always enamored of John’s enigmatic personality,” Brown told Rolling Stone. “Paul was the thorough one, the workaholic, and John was lazy.
Source: Emma McKee/imdb.com
The building, at 496 Broome Street, was the first home in New York City that the couple owned and is now listed by Sean Ono Lennon and his mother for $5.5 million. A two-story, red brick structure, with decorative checkerboard glass squares on the facade.
One of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s first homes in New York City was a two-story building at 496 Broome Street in SoHo.
It was the first New York City home they owned, shortly after the breakup of the Beatles. In the fall of 1971 — two years before moving to the famed Dakota apartment house on the Upper West Side — John Lennon and Yoko Ono had settled downtown, buying a petite loft-style building at 496 Broome Street in SoHo. At the time, Lennon had just released his second solo studio album, “Imagine.”
Upon relocating to New York, Lennon began forging his own identity with Ms. Ono, an avant-garde artist, musician and peace activist, while publicly distancing himself from his former bandmate Paul McCartney, with whom he had created some of the 20th century’s most popular songs.
“He thought New York was a place where he could be left alone,” said Philip Norman, the author of the biography “John Lennon: The Life.” “It really did seem like freedom — freedom from the Beatles. It was a very miserable life being a Beatle.”
Source: Vivian Marino/nytimes.com
