Beatles News
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" on Feb. 9, 1964. The 73 million viewers saw them perform five songs: "All My Loving," "Till There Was You," "She Loves You," "I Saw Her Standing There," and "I Want to Hold Your Hand."
Pandemonium that already had been labeled Beatlemania in Britain greeted them when they arrived at New York's Kennedy Airport on Feb. 7. There, they appeared for their first U.S. news conference.
"Will you sing something?" a reporter asked.
"No," they replied in unison, with Lennon then adding: "No, we need money first."
Hodo, his mom and two brothers watched The Ed Sullivan Show that Sunday in their living room in Doniphan. Hodo was 13 and overwhelmed by the experience, he said.
"It was life-changing," said Hodo, a local musician.
Within a short time, he and his brothers had guitars and drums, he said.
He had first heard "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in December. It had gone to No. 1 in the U.S.
"They were just having fun and making great music," said the 73-year-old Hodo. "It was the first time in my life I was struck by something."
Terry Smith, now a political science professor at Columbia College, was a student at Central Methodist University when the Beatles became big in the U.S. Someone in his dorm told him he had to hear this record, "Meet the Beatles," their first U.S. album.
"I knew I had never heard anything like it," Smith said.
And then, their appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show."
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Source: columbiatribune.com
The Beatles' ‘Rubber Soul’ is many things, but it's not an album about Paul McCartney's personal life. However, there are exceptions to every rule.
The Beatles‘ Rubber Soul is many things, but it’s not an album about Paul McCartney’s personal life. However, there are exceptions to every rule. One track from Rubber Soul is about Paul’s disillusionment with a 1960s movie star. Interestingly, Rubber Soul became a hit twice in the United Kingdom: once during the 1960s and once during the 1980s.
From 1963 to 1968, Paul dated actor Jane Asher. She was most known for her roles in movies like Alfie, The Masque of the Red Death, and Deep End. Similar to John Lennon’s relationship with Yoko Ono, Paul’s relationship with Asher left a big impact on The Beatles’ lyrics, including those for “I’m Looking Through You.” In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul discussed butting heads with Asher. He didn’t like that Asher put her career before their love.
“As is one’s wont in relationships, you will from time to time argue or not see eye to eye on things, and a couple of the songs around this period were that kind of thing,” Paul said. “This one I remember particularly as me being disillusioned over her commitment. She went down to the Bristol Old Vic quite a lot around this time.” The Bristol Old Vic is a theatre company.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
George Harrison and John Lennon grew used to dealing with Beatles fans. During one early concert, though, they decided to leave in the middle of performing.
In The Beatles’ touring years, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr dealt with screaming fans, natural disasters, and political unrest. The band felt exhausted and worn out by 1966, when they agreed to stop touring. This exhaustion came through during one early show, though. Harrison and Lennon were so fed up that they tried to leave in the middle of their performance.
In 1963, The Beatles played a show at the Wimbledon Palais for their Southern Area Fan Club Convention. Beatlemania was not yet at its peak, but the band got a hint of how their future shows would go. They had mentioned liking the candy Jelly Babies, and fans began pelting them at the band during their performance. They felt boxed in, and Starr said they all began to get nervous.“I remember we were in a cage at that gig, because it got so crazy,” he said in The Beatles Anthology. “It was like being in a zoo, on stage! It felt dangerous. The kids were out of hand. It was the first time I felt that if they got near us we would be ripped apart.”
Midway through the performance, Harrison decided he’d had enough.
“Halfway through, George said, ‘I’m not doing this,’ and he packed up, went to the stage door and began looking for a cab,” road manager Neil Aspinall recalled. “I ran after him and said, ‘What are you doing? You can’t walk out, we’ve got to finish.’”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Even the Beatles didn’t quite comprehend what awaited them in New York on Feb. 7, 1964.
Six days after “I Want to Hold Your Hold” broke through as their first No. 1 hit in the U.S., Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison braced for a warm welcome as Pan Am Flight 101 out of London neared its destination in Queens.
Never, however, did they expect the spectacle they found when they disembarked.
Some 3,000 fans, many of them smiling, shrieking, hysterical girls who skipped school on a Friday, ambushed JFK Airport, congregating along the rooftop and pushing past police barricades to catch a glimpse of the mop-topped British heartthrobs.
Delighted screams from overwhelmed teens served as the soundtrack as the grinning, waving Beatles stepped off of a Boeing 707 and onto American soil for the first time.
Those screams became a staple of McCartney, Lennon, Starr and Harrison’s two-week trip, during which they made history on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” played back-to-back concerts at Carnegie Hall and journeyed down to Washington, D.C., and Miami Beach.
“No one will understand the emotion of us landing in America,” Starr told the Daily News in 2019. “But it was New York, and all of the music we loved came from there. It was just far out.”
Source: Peter Sblendorio/nydailynews.com
Former Beatles star Sir Paul McCartney has revealed how his bandmate John Lennon hated wearing glasses until he discovered singer Buddy Holly's iconic specs-on lookSir Paul McCartney has revealed that John Lennon only started wearing his glasses when Buddy Holly made them cool.Macca said: “John had these horn-rimmed glasses at the time. If ever there would be a girl coming round, John would whip his glasses off... and squint. “But when Buddy came along, the glasses stayed on.” John changed to smaller, round NHS-style frames in 1966, for his role in the film How I Won the War. Sir Paul was speaking on a Radio 2 show marking 65 years since Holly’s death, aged 22, in an air crash, which is aired tomorrow. He also told host Bob Harris the Beatles were in awe of Holly, as he sang and played guitar at the same time. He said: “We thought, this is what we have to do.”
Source: Nicola Methven/mirror.co.uk
Sir Paul McCartney feared he'd be "finished off" when he was robbed at knifepoint.
The 81-year-old musician has recalled the terrifying moment when he and wife Linda were recording Wings' 1973 album 'Band on the Run' in Lagos, Nigeria, and were ambushed with all their “cameras, tape recorders, cassettes in a bag, and Linda’s photographic equipment”.
In an interview for his record label, seen first by The Sun newspaper, he said: “We’d been visiting some of our crew at their house and someone said, ‘Do you want a lift home?’ We said, ‘It’s such a beautiful night, we’ll walk.’”
Adopting a "desperado" spirit, the couple wandered into a no-go area and thought they were being offered a lift when a car stopped and the driver wound down his window.
Paul recalled: “I just say, ‘No, listen man, very nice of you but we don’t need a lift.’”
The vehicle, which contained 2five or six local guys" drove off but then suddenly stopped again.
Source: crowrivermedia.com
John Lennon didn't think it was a bad thing that The Beatles' fans screamed during their concerts. He was protective over the group's fans.
When John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr took the stage during Beatles concerts, they could hardly hear themselves play. Their audience began screaming before they saw the band and rarely stopped until after the band had departed. Members of the band found this frustrating, but Lennon defended their fans. While he seems like the most unlikely defender, his wife said he felt a great deal of gratitude for Beatles fans.
Footage of The Beatles running to take the stage during their concerts almost always includes shots of people covering their ears. The sound of screaming was so loud that the music could hardly reach the audience. Even the band couldn’t hear what they were doing.
“Screaming had just become the thing to do,” Starr said in The Beatles Anthology. “We didn’t say, ‘OK, don’t forget, at this concert — everybody scream!’ Everybody just screamed.”
While this bothered some members of the band, Lennon didn’t have a problem with it.
“We played for four or five years being completely heard and it was good fun,” Lennon said. “And it’s just as good fun to play being not heard and being more popular. They pay the money; if they want to scream — scream. We scream, literally; we’re just screaming at them, only with guitars. Everybody’s screaming — there’s no harm in it.”
Source:Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
It was the summer of 1966.
The Beatles were in the middle of a tour that had them play five shows in just three days at Japan’s famed Nippon Budokan arena — but when they weren’t performing, they were holed up in the presidential suite of the Tokyo Hilton creating a work of art that came to be known as "Images of a Woman."
That painting, believed by some experts to be the only artwork jointly made by all four Beatles (or at least signed by all four), was sold at Christie’s auction house in New York on Feb. 1.
"Images of a Woman" was estimated to fetch somewhere in the realm of US$400,000 to US$600,000 and “crystallizes a magic moment in Beatles history,” said Christie's specialist Casey Rogers during a phone interview. Its final sale price was nearly three times the high end of that estimate — US$1,744,000.
“It’s such a rarity to have a work on paper outside of their music catalog that is (a) physical relic, this tangible object with contributions from all four of The Beatles,” Rogers said of the 21.5- by 31-inch painting.
“It’s memorabilia, it’s a work of art, it appeals to probably a much larger cross-section of collectors… It’s a wonderful piece of storytelling.”
Source: Radhika Marya /ctvnews.ca
In 2023, Paul McCartney set the internet ablaze when he somewhat casually mentioned that he was working on a new song from The Beatles. Fans of the group were initially worried, as he mentioned he was using artificial intelligence to do so, but their fears were mostly assuaged after it was revealed how exactly the tech was being utilized. Months after the single, titled “Now and Then,” dropped, the track’s producer has stated that the legendary musician was just as respectful as one might hope during the delicate recording process.
“What was really exciting for me was watching Paul’s total respect for his band members in the process of doing this,” said Giles Martin, the producer behind “Now and Then.” He partnered with McCartney and Ringo Starr, the only two remaining members of The Beatles, on their surprise new single.
Martin told Louder Sound that while he and McCartney were working on “Now and Then,” the superstar went out of his way to ensure that the four members of the band were all represented and heard on the tune. When asked about the late musician George Harrison’s role on the track–which was recorded decades ago–Martin explained how McCartney treated his work.
“Paul was like: ‘Okay, the rhythm that’s being played by George, can you just isolate that? I want to hear what George is doing,’” Martin stated during the interview all about the making of “Now and Then.” He added that McCartney wanted to “make sure that we are playing exactly the rhythm he is playing and that we follow that on the record.”
Martin stated that when they were making the single, which was kept secret until the two Beatles rockers and their team were completely ready, McCartney felt that it was “really important that his contribution is really respected and that we’re not washing things out with too much color,” meaning the work that Harrison left behind.
Source: Hugh McIntyre/forbes.com
Millions, if not billions of people across the world have heard of The Beatles, or at least heard the names John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. One name that often gets lost when combing through the history of The Beatles, however, is May Pang.
Pang, at the age of 73 was recently featured in the documentary “Lost Weekend.” In the film, Pang paints an intimate picture of her life and goes into detail regarding the ups, the downs, truths and lies regarding her relationship with John Lennon. What started as a magical weekend getaway, turned into a whirlwind romance between the two.
Over the years, Pang amassed a collection of rare photos she was able to capture throughout her time with John and his son Julian. The photographs themselves show a different side of John that is both humorous and beautiful. Some of the photographs have significance to them regarding The Beatles to include the last photograph of Lennon and McCartney together.
Pang has a story to tell, one that resembles a rock ‘n’ roll fairytale. When approached to do the documentary, Pang was hesitant. “People were asking me all the time about doing something like this, but I wasn’t ready to say yes,” Pang said.
By 2017, Pang was no longer taken aback about the idea of doing the documentary and began the process of combing through all the photographs and materials she had. “We could have finished it in 2020 but Covid slowed that up a little and that gave us time to look at everything.”
Source: fsunews.com
