Beatles News
Mobile recording studios are a cornerstone of the recording industry, but few have the style— or inspiring mission—of the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus. For more than a quarter century, the nonprofit Lennon Bus has circled the U.S. and Canada, making stops at high schools and colleges to help students create music. The experience isn’t a simple feelgood photo-op either; it’s an exciting eight-hour day where visitors come aboard to write, perform and produce an original song and music video from scratch.
Students come away from the experience not only with content, but also new skills. “It’s not just for people who are self-described musicians or creators,” says Brian Rothschild, who co-founded the Bus with Yoko Ono Lennon. “It’s increasingly a way to show young people tools that they can use to demonstrate their knowledge and communicate about almost any kind of topic. It’s been made possible over the years by a collection of great sponsors, and we go to a lot of underserved communities, taking the finest tools that the industry has to offer out to places where maybe they don’t get to see and experience that. It’s meant to inspire.”
Source: Clive Young/Mixonline
On March 23, 1964, John Lennon’s first book, In His Own Write, was published in the U.K. The 78-page volume featured 31 nonsensical and absurd short stories and poems, as well as an introduction by Lennon’s Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney.
Besides his obvious passion for music, Lennon was an avid reader and art lover growing up. As a child and teen, he began to channel his creativity into making cartoon doodles and writing poems and short stories that displayed his skewed, absurd sense of humor and knack for clever wordplay.
With The Beatles’ star on the rise, Lennon showed some of his writing and drawings to journalist Michael Braun, who in turn showed them to the head of U.K. publishing company Jonathan Cape, Tom Maschler. Impressed by Lennon’s works, Maschler agreed to publish them in a book.
On the evening of In His Own Write’s publication, an interview with Lennon about the book aired on the BBC television show Tonight. In addition, several excerpts from the book were read by some of the show’s presenters.
The book received mostly favorable reviews and was a huge commercial success, with its first edition run of 25,000 copies selling out in one day. In His Own Write eventually sold 300,000 copies in the U.K. The book also was a bestseller in the U.S., where it was published on April 27, 1964.
Source: Matt Friedlander/americansongwriter.com
Paul McCartney is likely a familiar face on “favorite songwriters” lists everywhere. But, McCartney has a list of his own. Find three of the former Beatle’s favorite songwriters below.
1. Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan and the Beatles are intrinsically linked. Each member of the Fab Four has expressed their love for The Bard and they often ran in the same circles. Naturally, McCartney cites Dylan as one of his favorite songwriters to date.
“I always like what he does,” McCartney once explained. “Sometimes I wish I was a bit more like Bob. He’s legendary… and doesn’t give a shit! I love his singing – he came through the standards albums like a total crooner. But, yeah, I like his new stuff.”
2. Stevie Wonder
McCartney and Stevie Wonder have collaborated a couple of times. Moreover, McCartney has cited Wonder as one of his favorite songwriters. Macca dubbed Wonder with a descriptor we’re sure he’s received a fair few times: “Genius.”
“Stevie came along to the studio in LA and he listened to the track for about ten minutes and he totally got it,” McCartney once said of Wonder on the song “Only Our Hearts.” “He just went to the mic and within 20 minutes had nailed this dynamite solo. When you listen you just think, ‘How do you come up with that?’ But it’s just because he is a genius, that’s why.”
Source: Alex Hopper/americansongwriter.com
Paul McCartney’s handwritten, work-in-progress manuscript for the cheeky Beatles song “Lovely Rita” will be on view and up for grabs for US$650,000 next month at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan.
McCartney’s rough draft of the song, which John Lennon was also credited for, is from the much-acclaimed 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It’s among the treasures for sale at the ABAA New York International Antiquarian Book Fair from April 1-4.
Torn from a spiral notebook, the 7½-by-5-inch lined page with lyrics and edits, “is a cool piece of ephemera,” says Alex Hime, director of Biblioctopus, the Los Angeles-based rare books dealer presenting the item for sale.
“It represents the most important category of popular culture in the second half of the 20th century,” he says, “which is pop music.”
“Lovely Rita” depicts a humorous encounter with a traffic warden. The rough draft reveals the inner workings of an ace songwriter’s mind. “From this working manuscript you get to see the process,” Hime says.
On the page, seven lines in black are McCartney’s first concept, according to Biblioctopus. Three lines of changes are in blue. The lyric “writing all the numbers in her little black book” led to “filling in a ticket with her little blue pen.” More changes followed. The recorded lyric is “filling in a ticket in her little white book.”
McCartney’s rare rough draft has been archivally framed and parked in storage at Biblioctopus since the 1990s, when the dealer bought it at an auction “at Butterfields before they joined with Bonhams,” Hime says. The price then was around US$20,000.
Source: Joe Dziemianowicz/barrons.com
What Janet DiGangi recalls most vividly about the day the Beatles came to town is eating cake and ice-cream with furious impatience. It was 12 September 1964, and DiGangi was 12, living in Boston, Massachusetts, the oldest of seven siblings. The Beatles were about to play Boston Garden but the family couldn’t leave until they’d celebrated her brother Peter’s second birthday with candles and presents.
“I was furious, because I didn’t want to be late,” recalls DiGangi, now 72. She had saved up all her babysitting money to buy the band’s second US album, Meet the Beatles! “I was so excited.” Thankfully, DiGangi made it to the show on time. It was “electric”, and sent fans wild. “It was just an explosion of screaming and hysteria,” she says.
Like many Americans who watched the Beatles arrive in the US – either on 9 February 1964 on their first Ed Sullivan Show, or those who caught their North American tour later that year – the experience for DiGangi fostered a lifelong love and fascination with the band from Liverpool. As she grew up from a schoolgirl to an adolescent to a young woman, she tagged along as the band’s sound developed, from the boys next door of A Hard Day’s Night to the mop-haired artists of Revolver to the mature and creatively fractious White Album.
Source: Jem Bartholomew/theguardian.com
The online auction of a trove of letters, photos and other items that Pattie Boyd, who was at the heart of the Swinging 60s, concluded Friday – and it’s safe to say that it surpassed all expectations.
Christie’s, the world-renowned auction house, said its online sale of The Pattie Boyd Collection sold for around $3.6 million, or more than seven times the pre-sale high estimate of around 380,000 pounds.
The collection, which went on public display at Christie’s London headquarters last Friday, provided a glimpse into the heart of the 1960s and 70s counterculture.
The 111 lots up for sale included affectionate letters from both her iconic rock icon husbands George Harrison and Eric Clapton, alongside clothing, jewelry, drawings and photographs – some of Boyd, and some by her.
“I am completely blown away by the enthusiasm of international bidders for these special treasures that I have always loved,” Boyd said. “I am so happy that new hearts will now enjoy them, as they enter into their next ‘chapters.’ I am lucky that my life today continues to bring me joy and different adventures – I would encourage people to follow their passions and live their lives with gusto!”
Boyd, 80, is famous as a musicians’ muse, inspiration for The Beatles’ song “Something,” composed for her by Harrison, as well as for Clapton’s scorching “Layla” and sweet “Wonderful Tonight.”
Source: pressherald.com
In 1963, John Lennon cracked jokes onstage when The Beatles performed in the Royal Variety Performance. The band nervously took the stage and played for their large, wealthy audience. According to Lennon, they received multiple other requests to play the same show over the years. He shared why they turned all of them down.
John Lennon said The Beatles often turned down requests to play for the royal family
After several years of working together, The Beatles’ popularity took off in 1963. Their fanbase was growing exponentially and, soon, they were performing for the Queen Mother.
“The fame really started from when we played the Palladium,” Paul McCartney said in The Beatles Anthology. “Then we were asked to do the Royal Command Performance and we met the Queen Mother, and she was clapping.”
The Beatles and the Queen Mother | George Freston/Fox Photos/Getty Images
Lennon said that in the years after their performance,...
Source: imdb.com
On March 21, 1964, The Beatles scored their second consecutive No. 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 with “She Loves You.” The pop-rock classic with the infectious “yeah, yeah, yeah” chorus replaced the Fab Four’s breakthrough hit, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which had spent seven straight weeks at the top of the chart.
“She Loves You” held the No. 1 spot on the Hot 100 for two weeks, and then was replaced by yet another Beatles tune, “Can’t Buy Me Love,” which topped the chart for five straight weeks.
Co-written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, “She Loves You” was already huge hit in the U.K. long before its success on this side of the pond. Released on August 23, 1963, in the U.K., the song spent six non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 there between September and early December. “She Loves You” was the best-selling single in the U.K. for 1963, and remains The Beatles’ most successful single in their home country.
The song actually was first released as a single in the U.S. on September 16, 1963, on Swan Records. This was a couple months before the Fab Four signed a stateside deal with the Capitol label.
It finally entered the Hot 100 in January 1964, and really took off when The Beatles performed the tune on their famous Ed Sullivan Show appearance on February 9. “She Loves You” sat at No. 2 behind “I Want to Hold Your Hand” for four weeks before taking over the No. 1 spot.
Source: Matt Friedlander/americansongwriter.com
"It's the best one, innit?" McCartney said Lennon told him of lyrics he considered changing in the 1968 hit song
Paul McCartney is opening up about how he and John Lennon took a sad song and made it better.
On Wednesday's episode of The Beatles member's podcast from iHeartPodcasts and Pushkin, Paul McCartney: A Life in Lyrics, the music legend, 81, spoke about crafting the 1968 classic "Hey Jude." In addition to reflecting on how the song was inspired by his close relationship with Lennon's first-born son Julian and the time his bandmate left his first wife, Cynthia, and son to pursue a relationship with Yoko Ono, he shared that Lennon inspired him to keep a lyric he considered changing.
"'The movement you need is on your shoulder.' Now, I thought that was just me blocking in," McCartney admitted on the podcast.
The rock star revealed that the late icon convinced him not to alter a line in the song when he played it for him and Ono, 91, for the first time.
Source: Sadie Bell/ca.news.yahoo.com
As The Beatles burst out the door on the fire escape and Ringo Starr yells, “We’re out,” it’s a moment of freedom as they descend the stairs in their 1964 film, A Hard Day’s Night. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Starr are celebrating the fact they are breaking out of a television studio and avoiding throngs of screaming fans as they frolic on a field. The song accompanying the romp is “Can’t Buy Me Love.”
The scene utilized a bit of “movie magic, ” comprising three different locations. The fire escape was on the back of the legendary Hammersmith Odeon in London, and the band hurried onto a field at Gatwick Airport, while the scene was matched up with more footage filmed on the Thornbury Road Playing Fields. Lennon had to miss some filming as he was honored at a literary luncheon celebrating the success of his book, In His Own Write. Director Richard Lester filled in for the missing Beatle.
Source: Jay McDowell/americansongwriter.com
