Beatles News
During December 1965 and the first two months of ’66, The Beatles’ Rubber Soul album spent eight weeks at No.1 in the UK and six weeks at No.1 in the US, and was still in the US Top 20 when the group returned to Abbey Road studios in April ’66 to begin recording material for their next new album. The ‘all killer no filler’ excellence of Rubber Soul had set a new benchmark for the world’s top rock artists to equal, and was even talked about as having shifted the focus of rock music from singles to albums.
As others strove to equal it, The Beatles set about the task of making something even better.
“At this point in their career there was very little external pressure on them,” Apple Records director Tony Bramwell remembers. “EMI had all but given up trying to make them do things, and [Beatles manager] Brian Epstein never interfered in that way.”
Being a close associate of the band since his days of being their roadie in Liverpool, Bramwell noticed a different kind of pressure on them. “They were no longer the four-headed mop-top monster they’d been at the start,” he recalls. “They were developing their own lives away from the band, with John and George leading their suburban existences, George becoming interested in Indian music and Paul being thoroughly metropolitan, checking out the galleries and exhibitions, going to clubs and so on.”
Source: Johnny Black/loudersound.com
ohn Lennon said he relied on producer George Martin to talk to other musicians. He explained why he had a hard time doing it himself.
Over the course of his career, John Lennon worked with many musicians. The Beatles brought in other musicians to play on their songs, and he collaborated with many artists in his solo career. Despite this, Lennon said he found it difficult to talk about music with other artists. He explained that he relied on producer George Martin to do this for him because he was too shy.
In the early 1960s, The Beatles began working with Martin. He helped transform their music and bring their visions to life.
“George Martin had a very great musical knowledge and background, and he could translate for us and suggest a lot of things,” Lennon said in The Beatles Anthology. “He’d come up with amazing technical things, slowing down the piano and things like that. We’d be saying, ‘We want it to go un, un and ee, ee,’ and he’d say, ‘Well, look, chaps, I thought of this, this afternoon, and last night I was talking to… whoever, and I came up with this.’ And we’d say, ‘Great, great, come on, put it on here.’”
Lennon said that Martin’s musical knowledge also improved their music. He was able to introduce instruments they didn’t know existed into their music.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney played The Beatles' "Yesterday" for a major 1960s singer. He accidentally gave her the impression he was offering her the song.
Paul McCartney played The Beatles’ “Yesterday” for a major 1960s singer. He accidentally gave her the impression he was offering her the song. The 1960s star recorded the track anyway. Surprisingly, her cover sounds happy.
In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul said he went to the home of a famous singer after writing “Yesterday.” He worried the track sounded too much like a preexisting song, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. “I took it round to Alma Cogan at her flat in Kensington and asked, ‘What’s this song?’ because Alma was a bit of a song buff; there are a lot of people around like that and I admire them a lot,” Paul recalled. “Alma was very songy, knew a lot of Jerome Kern and Cole Porter and that kind of thing, and she said, ‘I don’t know what it is, but it’s beautiful.'”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/ cheatsheet.com
Philip Norman, the author of books about Paul McCartney, John Lennon and the Beatles as a group, discovers that Harrison was, among other things, a puzzle.
In a new biography, Philip Norman writes about the “paradox” of George Harrison, a man who was “unprecedentedly, ludicrously, suffocatingly famous while at the same time undervalued, overlooked and struggling for recognition.”
This was the central contradiction that made Harrison, the composer of classics like “Here Comes the Sun,” and “Taxman,” a fascinating figure, both as a Beatle and after the band broke up, as Norman explores in his book “George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle.” Norman tackled his latest subject after writing celebrated biographies of Paul McCartney and John Lennon, as well as “Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation,” a book that Harrison was critical of.
Source: Sopan Deb/nytimes.com
“It is the most sought-after recording console, from the most famous studio in the world, used by the greatest band in history, to make probably their most famous record.” Listening to British record producer Mike Hedges describe his precious asset as he prepares to offer it for sale, one might suspect him of a little marketeering. But in the case of the TG 12345 Mark 1 studio mixing desk, which comes to auction at Bonhams in London on Thursday December 14, there is little hyperbole at play.
Known as the “Abbey Road” console, this is the desk on which The Beatles worked for the final time in the studio together, in 1969. Gathered around it in Studio 2 of EMI’s London premises on Abbey Road, they were reunited with producer George Martin to record the last album they recorded together, ultimately named Abbey Road after what had become their creative home. The album has been cited by many, including Martin himself, as the pinnacle of their creative achievement.
Source: Tom Horan/ft.com
John Lennon's death devastated his fans. Yoko Ono wanted to get a message to them as quickly as she could.
After John Lennon’s death, millions of people across the world joined Yoko Ono in mourning. His sudden death came as a shock to everyone and devastated many. Ono was so worried about how Lennon’s fans would react that she made sure to get a message out to them. Here’s what she wanted them to hear after Lennon’s death.
On Dec. 8, 1980, Lennon and Ono were walking back to their apartment from the studio when Mark David Chapman shot and killed the former. When the news broke, people across the world began mourning the loss of the musician.
Though she likely was moved by this, Ono also found this a bit worrying. The day after Lennon’s death, she told friend and producer Jack Douglas to go on Tom Snyder’s late night talk show to address fans. She wanted him to tell fans not to harm themselves in response to Lennon’s death.
At the end of the interview, Douglas said Lennon would want everyone to know that “he meant the ’80s to be optimistic, and that he wanted to tell everyone that it’s gonna be alright if we pull together.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
The three-part series delves into the tragic events surrounding Lennon's assassination on Dec. 8, 1980
John Lennon’s influence was bigger than words could ever describe, so much so that his death shook the world to its core.
The esteemed member of The Beatles, who is also hailed as one of the greatest music legends of all time, was shot and killed in front of his New York City residence in December 1980. What followed was public uproar as fans mourned the loss and inquired why anybody would be compelled to kill Lennon in the first place.
Lennon’s assailant was identified as Mark David Chapman, who was infatuated with Lennon but also, resented him due to Lennon's religious stance (specifically his highly publicized 1966 remark about the Beatles being “more popular than Jesus”). Chapman ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a prison term of 20 years to life.
Source: Joy Saha/salon.com
The limited vinyl run will be released on December 15.
Paul McCartney is set to celebrate the third anniversary McCartney III with the limited run vinyl version of McCartney III — 3×3 Edition, to be released December 15 on Capitol Records.
McCartney III — 3×3 Edition will be released in three randomly distributed configurations, each featuring one of three unique combinations of multi-color vinyl and prints of Paul’s handwritten draft lyrics or of his hand-drawn album artwork sketch: the Tri-color vinyl + “Pretty Boys” lyric draft; the Three-striped vinyl + album artwork sketch; and the Swirl vinyl + “The Kiss of Venus” lyric draft.
Additionally, all copies of McCartney III — 3×3 Edition will feature new cover art and will include a poster of Ed Ruscha’s hand-sketched draft for the original McCartney III album artwork.
Originally released on December 18, 2020, McCartney III is the third in a trilogy of home-made self-titled albums that began with Paul’s milestone 1970 solo debut McCartney, and continued in 1980 with the bold, experimental McCartney II.
Source: Will Schube/udiscovermusic.com
Biopic tribute 'Something About George: The George Harrison Story' is set to hit the stage at the Theatre Severn in February to kick off its UK tour.
The show, which premiered in a sell-out show at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall for what would have been Harrison's 80th birthday last year, pays tribute to the man dubbed the 'quiet Beatle'.
From heartbreak to hedonism and song-writing to success, Something About George celebrates a life that was anything but quiet.
For its biggest tour to date, Something About George will visit 28 venues across the country from February.
The show stars West End performer and musician Daniel Taylor fresh from his TV appearance in BBC’s Unbreakable, where he made the final with his partner, head judge from Strictly Come Dancing, Shirley Ballas.
Daniel fronts the band of five to tell the fascinating story of George and performing his biggest hits, including My Sweet Lord, Something and While My Guitar Gently Weeps.
Source: Megan Jones/shropshirestar.com
It’s hard to convey now just how bleak and drab Fifties and sixties Britain were. Rationing might have been over for a while, but the regimented wartime vibe pervaded the torpor of the long snooze of the decade. As a kid I was bored rigid by the Adam Faiths & Cliff Richards, let alone GI-era Elvis & all the other US crooners. Surely there must be something else, or should I resign myself to a life of Light Entertainment hell? Fortunately, salvation was at hand in the form of the Beatles. At 60+ years distance their early pop hits sound like quaint emanations from another age, but for all their naivete songs like “She Loves You” & “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” still convey an impact, and a freshness absent from the mostly dreary US fixated pop that filled the charts then.
They brought a whole new approach, in terms of attitude and appearance, and innovations like George Harrison’s 12-string Rickenbacker, but most of all the Lennon/McCartney songwriting axis. Once they’d got going things were never going to be the same for the Tin Pan Alley hacks who churned out formula pop for mostly transient acts. The music biz establishment sat back and waited for the group – and all those soon following in their wake – to be a passing craze. Sure enough many of the old-school showbiz acts like Freddie & the Dreamers were soon left looking out of time, but there was no stopping the momentum once other acts started to follow the Beatles example. Andrew Loog Oldham was quick to spot this development and told Mick Jagger & Keith Richards they had to write their own material or be left behind – allegedly locking them in a room until they came up with the goods. They were soon to leave the purist Blues and R&B sound of their early singles – which even included a Lennon/McCartney song – and produce classics like....
Source: Den Browne/louderthanwar.com
