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Beatles News
It’s symbolic that The Beatles‘ final No. 1 single is “The Long and Winding Road.” The Fab Four had certainly traveled down a long and winding road to get to where they were when they recorded the tune.
Paul McCartney based ‘The Long and Winding Road’ on the road leading to town from his Scottish farm
In his book, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul McCartney wrote that from the bedroom window of his farmhouse in Kintyre, Scotland, he could see a road that twisted away into the distance toward the main road. It was the road to town, Campbeltown.
Paul bought High Park Farm in 1966. It was a very remote retreat, and it was almost in ruin when he bought it. That is until his first wife, Linda, fixed it up and turned it into a private haven for them and their growing family in the late 1960s.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
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The Beatles remain a popular band decades after they broke up. A few musicians hated the band, but millions of people loved them. They sent several singles and albums to the top of the Billboard charts throughout the 1960s, but three Beatles records peaked at No. 2 in the United States because other Beatles albums kept them from getting to No. 1.
The Fab Four released a steady stream of albums from 1963 to 1970. They existed for a short time but achieved incredible success as 14 of their studio albums raced to the top of the Billboard 200 albums chart. Still, the first Beatles album to debut at No. 1 was the first anthology compilation released in 1995.
Let’s look more closely at The Beatles albums that peaked at No. 2 because other Beatles albums held the top spot.
Note: We included studio albums only, not greatest hits packages, compilations, or reissues.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
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Whether you were a fan or not, it is difficult to deny the impact the Beatles made on the last 60 years of music, and there would be no Fab Four without the group's founder, John Lennon. His name has been lifted among the lauded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time; his music has sold millions of copies well before streams ever existed. His legend loomed so large that there were portions of his life when John couldn't walk the street without being swarmed by a mob of screaming fans.
In less than 40 years of life, he claimed to be "more popular than Jesus" and added the term "bed-in" into the cultural zeitgeist—all before being murdered under the archway of his apartment building in New York City; his wife, Yoko Ono, by his side.
On the surface, his life story appeared to be a meteoric rise to the top of stardom worthy of envy or emulation. Underneath it all, however, John was a far more complex character than the sleek suits and mop-topped hairstyles of the early '60s portrayed. Many know who John Lennon is, but who was John Lennon, really?
Source: Olivia Monahan/tylerpaper.com
Ringo Starr saw his confidence grow as during his time in The Beatles. He started as a nervous newcomer but then grew into his role in the band. Ringo fully embraced boasting about his skill during the Abbey Road sessions, but he never wanted to sit at the mixing console working on Beatles albums for the most Ringo of reasons.
Being the last to join The Beatles and the only one who didn’t write songs had its perks for Ringo. Being the fourth Beatle was a positive since he faced less pressure than John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison.
That extended to making the records. As the primary songwriters, John, Paul, and George spent plenty of time at the mixing desk ensuring their songs on The Beatles’ albums sounded as close to what they heard in their heads as possible, especially when they became a studio band. That job wasn’t for Ringo, as he explained in his book Postcards From the Boys.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
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There are some who simply assume that George Harrison’s love for Indian music dates from around the time he and the other Beatles went to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s lecture in London, on August 24, 1967. In fact, George’s interest was piqued in April 1965 when The Beatles were filming Help! in April 1965.
“We were waiting to shoot the scene in the restaurant when the guy gets thrown in the soup, and there were a few Indian musicians playing in the background,” Harrison recalled. “I remember picking up the sitar and trying to hold it and thinking, ‘This is a funny sound.’ It was an incidental thing, but somewhere down the line, I began to hear Ravi Shankar's name. The third time I heard it, I thought, ‘This is an odd coincidence.’ And then I talked with David Crosby of The Byrds, and he mentioned the name. I went and bought a Ravi record; I put it on and it hit a certain spot in me that I can't explain, but it seemed very familiar to me. The only way I could describe it was: my intellect didn't know what was going on and yet this other part of me identified with it. It just called on me… A few months elapsed and then I met this guy from the Asian Music C details
Over the years, Beatles fans have enjoyed a wealth of programming that they can watch about the band. Documentaries have been made about each member of the band, and series like Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back follow the band through archival footage. Here are several films and series that fans of the Beatles should watch.
When The Beatles: Get Back aired on Disney+, fans had a chance to watch the band write, record, and perform classic songs. For the three-part documentary series, Jackson sifted through hours of footage originally captured for the 1970 documentary Let It Be.
While Let It Be provided audiences with a look into the band’s inevitable breakup, Get Back showed footage of the band enjoying their time together in spite of mounting tensions. Jackson said that he did not want to make the series if it was strictly about The Beatles’ break up.
Source: Emma McKee/Emma McKee
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After leaving The Beatles, Paul McCartney had more freedom to do whatever he wanted musically. His solo career and time with Wings are filled with oddball songs that showed McCartney’s willingness to think outside the box and experiment with new sounds. One song from Wings was an intriguing choice for the singer-songwriter, and he labeled it as a “joke,” even though he enjoyed the track. Venus and Mars is the fourth studio album released by Paul McCartney and Wings. The album had massive expectations, following up on the critically acclaimed and commercially successful Band on the Run. While it didn’t receive the same acclaim, it still reached No. 1 on the charts and featured the No. 1 single “Listen to What the Man Said”.The album ends with an odd duo. The second to last track is “Treat Her Gently/Lonely Old People,” which is a track from the perspective of two lonely old people who are sitting at home alone as the day goes by. The last track is “Crossroads,” a cover of the theme song of British soap opera. The soap opera lasted from 1964 to 1988 and was a popular series amongst older viewers. The theme was composed by Tony Hatch and was widely recognizable to British details
The behind-the-scenes pictures were taken during the band's famous 1965 US tour by musician Alan Holmes, a member of Beatles' support act Sounds Inc.
They capture the Fab Four on stage, at press conferences as well as during the filming of the famous Ed Sullivan Show.
The collection will go under the hammer later this month and is expected to fetch £5,000.
Pictures of screaming fans at the 1965 Shea Stadium concert also feature in the collection
The lot of 38 original prints, 12 rolls of film and colour transparencies, all taken in 1964 and 1965, will be sold with full copyright.
Pictures from the 1965 Shea Stadium concert also feature in the lot, where the noise of some 55,000 fans was said to be so deafening neither the band nor the crowd could hear a note of what was being played on stage.
Mr Holmes never published the images in his lifetime and the collection was passed to a friend following his death.
Source: BBC News/bbc.com
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A reporter brought up The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” to John Lennon. John connected the song to George Harrison’s feelings regarding the weather.
“Here Comes the Sun” inspired covers by Booker T. & the M.G.’s, Nina Simone, Cat Stevens, and others.
John Lennon connected The Beatles‘ “Here Comes the Sun” to his own life. In addition, he contrasted it with George Harrison’s living situation. Notably, the song never hit the top 40 in the United States or the United Kingdom.During a 1980 interview with Rolling Stone, John discussed going to see an astrologer. “I remembered that astrologer in London telling me, ‘One day you’ll live abroad,'” he said. “Not because of taxes.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
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Paul McCartney said his single favorite aspect of The Beatles‘ “Lady Madonna” is the dark recurring phrase, “See how they run.” The line is more complex than anyone can imagine and comes from a subconscious place inside Paul. The singer-songwriter has always known how to juxtapose light and dark, good and bad, in his songs with minimal effort.
Paul McCartney in the recording studio in 1968.
In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul wrote that his mother’s death is something he never got over. He was only fourteen when Mary McCartney died of breast cancer. So, he knows that a song that depicts a “very present, nurturing mother” has got to be influenced by a similar sense of loss, just as “Lady Madonna” does.
“The question about how Lady Madonna manages ‘to feed the rest’ is particularly poignant to me, since you don’t have to be a psychoanalyst to figure out that I myself was one of ‘the rest,'” Paul wrote. He believes he must have felt left out, needing a mother’s love, at the time.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com