Beatles News
Ringo Starr has been issuing EPs since 2021 but is now pledging to return with an album-length project. He'll follow up the April release of Crooked Boy by circling back to country music, a genre that helped define Starr's career with the Beatles and as a solo artist.
"I'm working on it with someone very special – T Bone Burnett," Starr tells USA Today. "He's doing stuff in Nashville and he comes to L.A. and it's all working out. He came to me with nine songs. It won't be out until October, at least."
Starr also recorded 1970's countrified Beaucoup of Blues in Nashville. His sophomore solo release consolidated an influence that played out in Beatles-era covers like Buck Owens' "Act Naturally" and Starr's own rootsy original "Don't Pass Me By."
Taking the concept seriously, Starr completed Beaucoup of Blues alongside a group of ace country pickers and producer Pete Drake, a steel guitar-playing Nashville legend. "I think some of my finest vocals are on that album," Starr has said, "because I was relaxed."
Starr had met Drake during the sessions for former bandmate George Harrison's All Things Must Pass, and they both appeared on the title track. So, he trusted Drake in selecting the material and the sidemen, which included Charlie Daniels, Ben Keith and D.J. Fontana.
Starr hasn't yet confirmed who might play on his as-yet-untitled country follow-up. In the meantime, he's going back on the road later this month with his All-Starr Band. The lineup again features long-time collaborator Steve Lukather, who's been Starr's longest-serving solo bandmate. The Toto stalwart has appeared on every All-Starr Band date since 2012.
Source: Nick DeRiso/i95rock.com
Although it’s hard to imagine anyone but Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr making up the Fab Four, for a brief moment in the early 1960s, the future Beatles adopted cheeky stage names while cutting their teeth in a cover band that was (unwillingly) playing for (mostly) free.
The three original members of the now iconic band, McCartney, Lennon, and Harrison, settled on several names before adopting the Beatles. The trio performed as the Quarrymen for a spell until an audition to be a backing band for a touring musician sent the artists back to the drawing board.
Lennon first floated the Crickets as a potential moniker, but McCartney shot it down, arguing that another band had already used that name. Eventually, the band settled on the Silver Beetles. But the Liverpool musicians didn’t stop there. The Musicians Used Their Professional Digs To Adopt New Stage Names.
The audition that prompted the band’s name change was for London-based music promoter Larry Parnes, who was looking for backing bands who could play with various touring singers around the U.K. In a fortunate preview of the success that was to come, the Silver Beetles landed the gig and began performing on the road with a singer and fellow Liverpudlian named Johnny Gentle.
The former Beatle recalled the moment the Silver Beetles (who were never billed as such but rather as “Johnny Gentle and his group”) decided it was time for yet another stage name change in Anthology. “Now we were truly professional. We could do something we had been toying with for a long time, which was to change our names to real showbiz names.” Unsurprisingly, each band member had a different idea for what classified as a “real showbiz name.”
McCartney adopted the name Paul Ramon, which he later said was “suitably exotic.” He particularly liked the French feel of the name Ra-mon—yet another example of McCartney using pseudo-French to impress girls, just like when he wrote the party song-turned-love song “Michelle.”
Source: Melanie Davis/americansongwriter.com
On September 9th, 1971, John Lennon released the iconic album, "Imagine."
John Lennon was a U.K singer-songwriter who rose to global fame as a co-founder of the Beatles, the most commercially successful band in the history of pop music. After forming a songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney, the two of them brought the band to fruition.
After the Beatles disbanded in 1970, Lennon embarked on a solo career producing several smash hit records including "John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band" and "Imagine."
"Imagine" is Lennon's second solo studio album and is more heavily produced in contrast to the more raw and rudimental sound on his first album "John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band." In 2012, "Imagine" was voted 80th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time." The album is even considered Lennon's best work while producing his most critically-acclaimed song -- the title track "Imagine" -- which sold 1.6 million copies in the U.K. and was co-produced by himself and Yoko Ono.
Lennon and Yoko Ono had an affair during the late 1960s and 70s. The two met and protested against the Vietnam War which blossomed into a relationship unbeknownst of Lennon's current wife at the time. Rumors suggest Ono miscarried a male child of Lennon's during this time. The two of them shared a relationship through much of the remainder of his life though.
Source: Chris Rollins/aol.com
“Beatles” singer Paul McCartney, 81, is one of the most popular musicians in the modern era, and his storied career includes his love for his wife of 30 years, Linda Eastman, who passed away after bravely battling breast cancer. The “Beatles” star stood by her side until the very end, praising her courage and positive fighting attitude.
“She was fighting right up to the end,” McCartney told People Magazine of his resilient wife, who died in 1998.
McCartney, a member of the iconic 1960s band The Beatles, known for hits like “Come Together,” “Let It Be,” and “Strawberry Fields Forever,” has long made music that was deeply influenced by his personal life. His marriage to Linda Eastman in 1969 and their subsequent journey together, including the birth of their four children, left an indelible mark on his music and his life.
Decades later, Eastman was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1995, People Magazine reports.
According to the Washington Post, she underwent treatment from 1995 to 1997. Sadly, her cancer spread to her liver. However, she did not let her diagnosis stop her from doing what she loved. “She didn’t know she was dying,” McCartney said. “She is such a strong, forward-thinking lady and such a positive girl.”
The day before she passed away, she was riding horses. “She loved riding so much. Sometimes, she’d get up on her horse, and I’d say, ‘You don’t want to get down, do you?’ She preferred it up there than on the ground,” McCartney said.
Source: Kavontae Smalls/survivornet.com
The work of a producer isn’t always easy, but rarely does it result in physical exhaustion. However, John Lennon and one outlandish idea once brought George Martin to the brink of passing out.
While making Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Lennon penned “Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite.” He got the inspiration for the song after seeing a poster in Kent, England. He used the words on the poster to compose the lyrics, resulting in a complex (if a little odd) Beatles track.
While the lyrics are certainly interesting enough on their own, the sound of a fairground adds even more atmosphere to this track. It was Lennon’s idea that the song have a certain chaos to it, but it was Martin who had to pull it off. As the story goes, it took quite the toll on the legendary producer.
Martin and the engineer on duty pieced together different fragments of the tape to give the song a frenzied feel. Moreover, Martin personally added harmonium elements–an instrument that is somewhere between a keyboard and an accordion. After playing the taxing instrument for hours, Martin reached the brink of exhaustion.
“You have to pump the harmonium with your feet,” Geoff Emerick, the engineer, once said. “He was pumping away for four hours. He collapsed onto the floor after that, spread-eagled and exhausted.”
Source: Alex Hopper/americansongwriter.com
When Beatlemania first swept the United States in 1964, a moment pinpointed in time by the band’s first-ever televised performance on The Ed Sullivan Show that February, only four people knew exactly what it was like to be at the center of such a revolutionary cultural frenzy: Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.
Now, almost exactly 60 years later, American fans are getting the rare chance to see behind the curtain of The Beatles’ unprecedented rise to fame, all thanks to McCartney documenting the period with his personal Pentax film camera more than half a century ago.
Upon being recovered from the living legend’s archives, more than 250 of his photographs were put on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London last year – and now, they’ve made their way to the Brooklyn Museum in New York City.
Source: Jenny Regan and Hannah Dailey/yahoo.com
“I was always moaning about the original film, because there was no real joy in it,” Ringo Starr recalls to The Daily Beast of the 1970 documentary film Let It Be, which was released just weeks after news of the Beatles’ split had hit the press.
Since Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary premiered on Disney+ in 2021, even the most casual Beatles fan knows what Starr is talking about. The Let It Be film and album were a dismal affair for all involved. Salvaged from the ashes of Paul McCartney’s idea for the Beatles to “get back,” literally, to their roots by writing and recording a new album, the nearly 60 hours of footage filmed by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg during January 1969 chronicled the end of the greatest creative collaboration of the last century.
But Let It Be got only a limited theatrical release in 1970. Now, at long last, a restored version arrives on Disney+ this week.
“All these years, did I wish it to come out? Of course. Did I hope it would? Well, you know, hope is a like a candle: sometimes it flickers and sometimes it’s bright and sometimes it goes out,” Lindsay-Hogg admits. Dressed nattily and holding forth in a Disney conference room in midtown Manhattan, the 84-year-old director looked preternaturally youthful when we recently met to discuss Let It Be, which has been wonderfully restored by Jackson’s team after he used Lindsay-Hogg’s footage for Get Back. “The catalyst, really, was Peter Jackson. Right from the beginning, he was very direct and very respectful.”
Of course, back in 1969 and ’70, things didn’t go according to plan, either. John Lennon was preoccupied with his then-blossoming relationship with Yoko Ono (and dabbling in heroin), and George Harrison had finally had enough, having just returned from a visit with Bob Dylan and the Band in Woodstock, where he had been treated with the respect he no doubt felt he deserved. Even Starr, frustrated by the ever-increasing tensions among the band members, had struck out in films and began contemplating a solo career in earnest.
Source: Jeff Slate/thedailybeast.com
When Peter Jackson’s documentary series The Beatles: Get Back premiered on Disney+ in 2021, fans finally had definitive proof that—despite that prevailing narrative that followed the release of the 1970 documentary Let It Be—Yoko Ono did not split up the Beatles. After all, among the eight hours of footage of the Beatles recording their second-to-last album, there was a candid interview with Paul McCartney where he said it was fine with him, actually, that John Lennon’s girlfriend was hanging around the studio. He thought it was sweet.
But now the original Let It Be documentary is streaming on Disney+, and, for the first time since a low-quality VHS release in the ’80s, fans are able to watch a restored version of the documentary fans saw in theaters in 1970. And guess what? There’s absolutely no evidence that Yoko Ono had a single thing to do with the Beatles break-up in this movie, either! Instead, there is ample evidence that the blame lies entirely on McCartney and George Harrison.
Source: Anna Menta/decider.com
The most surprising thing about the reissue of Let It Be is that it commences with footage shot not in 1969 but last year: an interview between Peter Jackson and the film’s director, Michael Lindsay-Hogg. If nothing else, this suggests that Lindsay-Hogg is a good sport, given that Jackson’s eight-hour 2021 docuseries The Beatles: Get Back substantially retold the version of events depicted in Lindsay-Hogg’s film about the Beatles’ 1969 recording sessions at Twickenham Studios and in the basement of their Apple HQ.
Furthermore, Get Back made Lindsay-Hogg himself look like a bit of a ninny, ceaselessly cajoling the Beatles to perform a filmed live performance in an amphitheatre in Tripoli – “Torchlit! In front of 2,000 Arabs!” – undaunted by various Beatles telling him to stick his idea, and indeed the Beatles apparently splitting up in front of him: his reaction to George Harrison quitting the band midway through filming was to recommence badgering a shattered and tearful-looking Paul McCartney about the amphitheatre gig. No wonder Jackson introduces him with the line: “I guess people might be asking themselves why you might be here talking to me.”
Source: Alexis Petridis/theguardian.com
In 1970, it looked like a portrait of the Beatles breaking up. Now it looks like the first rock 'n' roll reality show — and a vision of them coming together.
I first saw “Let It Be” when I was a kid, in the summer of 1970, just weeks after it was released. My family was coming off one of those “Vacation” road trips. During the miles of driving, we listened to Top 40 radio, which meant that several times a day I got to hear “The Long and Winding Road,” which I thought was the most beautiful song I’d ever heard. (To this day, I adore the Phil Spector heavenly-choir orchestral-layer-cake version and have never understood Paul McCartney’s aversion to it.) I knew that the first thing I was going to do when we got back was go to see “Let It Be” — and, in fact, it was the first Beatles thing I was old enough to connect to as it was happening.
The Beatles, in their early years, looked alike (same hair and suits, same lemon-shaped smiles), and even after they’d entered the psychedelic zone with “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper” they dressed and coiffed themselves with a splashy coordinated harmony. They were unified. And that made a kind of supreme sense, since they were the larger-than-life pop avatars of love. They sang about love and made a mantra of it; love was the centrifugal force that held their music together. But “Let It Be,” starting with that plaintive shrug of a title (which seemed to be telling a planet’s worth of fans that the dream was over), had a very different vibe.
Source: Owen Gleiberman/variety.com
