Beatles News
George Harrison began to grow tired of The Beatles by the mid-1960s. By the end of the decade, he would have done anything to get out of the band.
When The Beatles officially broke up in 1969, George Harrison breathed a sigh of relief. He had grown tired of the band and had even briefly quit. While he acknowledged that being in the band had some benefits, he saw it as a rut. He said that by the end of the
When Harrison became more interested in writing songs, his frustration with The Beatles began to mount. Paul McCartney and John Lennon were the band’s primary songwriters, and they didn’t seem to want this to change. They pushed back on Harrison’s contributions and valued their work over his. As a result, he saw the band’s breakup as a chance to grow creatively.
“My feeling when we went our separate ways was to enjoy the space that it gave me, the space to be able to think at my own speed and to have some musicians in the studio who would accompany me on my songs,” Harrison said in The Beatles Anthology. “It sounds strange, because most people would like to be in The Beatles, or at that time it looked like such a great thing to be in. And it was. But it was also a great thing to get out of — just as when you grow up and leave home and spread your wings.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
The Beatles' "Do You Want to Know a Secret?" was even more secretive than you thought! John Lennon said he penned the song in a "secret little apartment" in Liverpool.
The Beatles‘ “Do You Want to Know a Secret?” was even more secretive than you thought! John Lennon said he penned the song in a “secret little apartment” owned by an important figure in rock ‘n’ roll history. Paul McCartney’s memories of the song contradict John’s.
The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono features a 1980 interview. In it, John discussed The Beatles’ “Do You Want to Know a Secret?” That ballad was one of the rare Beatles hits with lead vocals from George Harrison.
“Well, I can’t say I wrote it for George,” John said. “I was in the first apartment I’d ever had that wasn’t shared by fourteen other students — gals and guys at art school. I’d just married Cyn, and [The Beatles’ manager] Brian Epstein gave us his secret little apartment that he kept in Liverpool for his sexual liaisons separate from his home life. And he let Cyn and I have that apartment.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
John Lennon felt he deserved credit for getting one of George Harrison's songs released as the B-side of The Beatles' "The Ballad of John and Yoko." The latter is edgy.
It would be an understatement to say John Lennon and George Harrison had some issues with each other. John felt he deserved credit for getting one of George’s songs released as the B-side of The Beatles’ “The Ballad of John and Yoko.” The latter song did well despite its edgy lyrics.
The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono features a 1980 interview. During the interview, the “Instant Karma!” singer said he didn’t like his unflattering portrayal in George’s book I, Me, Mine. John recalled times he looked out for George.
“I made sure George got the B-side of ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko,’ I think,” he said, referring to George’s song “Old Brown Shoe.” “And those little things he doesn’t remember. You know, I always tried … It was because of me that Ringo and George got a piece of John and Paul’s songwriting.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
Beatles fans will be offered a glimpse into George Harrison’s childhood through the back door of his former home, which has gone on display in a museum.
The door, previously on the guitarist’s family home in Upton Green, Speke, Liverpool, is the latest item from the Fab Four’s past to go on show at the Liverpool Beatles Museum.
Harrison moved to the home from the age of six, in 1950, and the family stayed there until 1962.
Owner Roag Best, brother of one time Beatles drummer Pete Best, with the back door from the former home in Upton Green in Speke, Liverpool (Chris Neill/Beatles Museum)
Museum owner Roag Best – the brother of early Beatles drummer Pete Best – said: “Upton Green had the Quarry Men and also John, Paul and George rehearsing together at the house. George was still living there at the beginning of Beatlemania.”
The terraced home is now an Airbnb owned by Ken Lambert, who got in touch with the museum.
“When he bought the house the previous owners asked him if he was interested in the original back door,” Mr Best said.
“It was just propped up in an outbuilding, a little bit worse for wear.
“He and a friend spent a considerable amount of time renovating the door and once it was renovated he wasn’t going to put it back on the house because it’s 73 years old, if not older.
Source: breakingnews.ie
In contrast to the White Album and Let It Be, Abbey Road – released in September 1969 – found The Beatles operating relatively cohesively; attempting to pull together, in step with one another if not exactly on the same page. "Abbey Road was really unfinished songs all stuck together," bemoaned John Lennon. "None of the songs had anything to do with each other, no thread at all.”
It was the final collection of songs The Beatles recorded together, and our track-by-track guide tells its story. 'Come Together'
Very much John Lennon’s song, Abbey Road’s opener started out as Let’s Get It Together, a campaign song for Timothy Leary, standing against Ronald Reagan for Governor of California.
Lennon kick-started his lyric with a phrase from Chuck Berry’s You Can’t Catch Me (‘Here come old flat-top’), but neglected to cut the line from the finished recording. Berry’s publishers initiated plagiarism proceedings but settled out of court in 1973 on condition Lennon record three of their songs (hence his 1975 album Rock ’N’ Roll).
Source: Ian Fortnam/loudersound.com
“Watching the Wheels” will go down as one of the loveliest songs in John Lennon’s catalog. His mind clear and the restlessness of previous years largely cooled, he wrote a playful, tender ode to the joys of dropping out of the rat race to be with family. It’s a bitter irony that fate would take that all away from him and lend “Watching the Wheels” an entirely unintended context. Let’s take a look back at the meaning behind “Watching the Wheels” by John Lennon—how this amazing song came to be, starting with where Lennon was in his life at the time that he wrote it.It’s nothing these days for even the hottest musicians to take several years between major album releases. But that kind of thing just wasn’t done that often in the ‘70s. Rock stars were expected to churn out product on the regular. John Lennon was arguably the most famous musician in the world at that time. Yet he maintained radio silence for the entire second half of the decade.
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
“I heard that Denny was getting better, there was hope for the future, but obviously not,” says McCartney of the singer and guitarist who stuck with him in Wings through good times and bad. “It’s very sad because Denny was great. Can you imagine trying to start another band after The Beatles? With Denny, we managed it.”
In the early ‘70s Paul McCartney knew all about having work to do. The end of the band against which all others must be judged left him in a depression, exacerbated not only by feeling he had peaked aged 27 but also the law suit he filed on December 31, 1970, in response to John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr appointing Allen Klein as Beatles manager. The old gang fell apart. McCartney needed a new gang. It turned out to be his family.
“Yes, that was the feeling,” says McCartney. “After the end of The Beatles I was faced with certain alternatives. One was to give up music entirely and do God knows what. Another was to start a super-band with very famous people, Eric Clapton and so on. I didn’t like either so I thought: How did The Beatles start? It was a bunch of mates who didn’t know what they were doing. That’s when I realised maybe there is a third alternative: to get a band that isn’t massively famous, to not worry if we don’t know what we’re doing because we would form our character by learning along the way. It was a real act of faith. It was crazy, actually.”
Source: Will Hodgkinson/mojo4music.com
Paul McCartney said it was a challenge for The Beatles' girlfriends to fit in with them. He shared why this was such a difficult task.
By 1966, every Beatle but Paul McCartney was married. Their manager had tried to keep their relationships secret for fear it would alienate their fans, but this didn’t stop the Beatles from pursuing romance. According to McCartney, it was difficult to date a Beatle. He shared why he thought the bond between bandmates was difficult for their partners to handle.
The relationships between members of The Beatles would eventually fracture and ice over. In the early 1960s, though, they were quite close. The band did everything together even when they weren’t working on music. This meant that the women in their lives often took a secondary role.
“We had a good relationship. Even with touring there were enough occasions to keep a reasonable relationship going,” McCartney said in The Beatles Anthology. “To tell the truth, the women at that time got sidelined.”
A black and white picture of The Beatles sitting on a couch with tea cups on a table in front of them. Paul McCartney sips from a cup and George Harrison holds a newspaper.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Get back indeed. On November 3, 2023, more than 25 years after the release of two new Beatles songs for the group’s multi-part Anthology documentary series (Free As A Bird and Real Love, which featured surviving members Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr lending accompaniment to a sparse John Lennon 70s-era demo), came what is being described as the last Beatles song ever: Now And Then.
During the Jeff Lynne-led reunion sessions in 1994, Paul, George and Ringo spent a little time laying down some ideas over John’s Now And Then demo before work ceased. Decades later, using film director Peter Jackson’s de-mixing technology, which allowed clear separation of John’s vocals on his rudimentary demo, Now And Then, produced by Paul McCartney and Giles Martin with additional production by Jeff Lynne, is given the grandiose ‘Fab Four’ treatment.
Source: Ken Sharp/loudersound.com
John Lennon said he lied about writing Beatles songs without Paul McCartney. One of his tunes became a hit when George Martin turned it into an instrumental.
John Lennon wasn’t always concerned with writing melodies. Despite this, he said two of The Beatles’ songs showed he could write melodies “with the best of them.” One of these tunes was a hit — but only after George Martin created an instrumental recording of it.
In a 1980 interview from the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, John discussed his role in The Beatles. “My contribution to Paul’s songs was always to add a little bluesy edge to them,” he said. “Otherwise, y’know, ‘Michelle’ is a straight ballad, right? He provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, the bluesy notes.” This balance between Paul’s sensibilities and John’s was the main magic of the Fab Four’s sound.
John didn’t always care about melodies. “There was a period when I thought I didn’t write melodies, that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock ‘n’ roll,” he remembered. “But of course, when I think of some of my own songs — ‘In My Life,’ or some of the early stuff, ‘This Boy’ — I was writing melody with the best of them.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
