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Beatles News
By 1967, the cat was out of the bag as far as The Beatles and drugs were concerned. Before that, fans might have heard the band sing about a “Day Tripper” or felt like they’d been on an acid trip listening to Revolver, but after the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Paul McCartney admitted he’d taken LSD.
That led to all sorts of speculation about the band’s music. On the subject of “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” many insisted the initials (i.e., LSD) spoke volumes about the song’s content. (John Lennon said it was about a drawing his son Julian had made at school.)
Marijuana was a different story, however. During recording sessions, The Beatles were spotted puffing on a joint and having a laugh. And Paul later said he wrote “Got to Get You Into My Life” not about a woman, but about weed.
Fab Four pot use really took off in 1965. Late that year, they recorded the album George Harrison called the first when they were “fully fledged potheads.” And the stories about them filming Help! earlier in the year definitely back up that assessment.
Source: cheatsheet.com
For the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club sessions, The Beatles wrote several songs based on newspaper articles they’d read. In the most famous example, John Lennon combined stories about a car wreck and a call for public improvements (4,000 potholes in Blackburn) on “A Day in the Life.”
But the list only begins there. On “Lovely Rita,” Paul McCartney invented a fictional meter-maid based on an article he read about that new profession (circa 1967). And Paul once again turned to the papers when he wrote “She’s Leaving Home.”
While Paul had invented his fictional band led by Billy Shears for the album’s concept, he had a real-life subject in mind when telling the story of a wealthy runaway girl. And the craziest part is, Paul had met the same girl four years earlier while making a TV appearance.
Source: cheatsheet.com
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The new remastered version of "Abbey Road" offers some interesting alternate versions and mixes on the very last album The Beatles recorded — although it wasn't the last to be released.
"Abbey Road" topped the charts in both the U.S and England when it shortly after it debuted on Sept. 26. 1969. Now, a new remastered and remixed 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition has been released. Is it worth it? Yes and no.
I learned a long time ago remastering a classic album sometimes pays off — and sometimes it doesn't. Although sometimes previously unheard notes can be brought to the fore, that doesn't necessarily improve the listening experience.
When compact discs were first released, not every album was immediately available in the then-new format. Although they were touted to have improved sound, discerning listeners soon learned that many of the discs didn't sound as good as the vinyl they were supposedly replacing.
It took a matter of years for many albums to be converted to CD, with The Beatles — amazingly — among the last of the classic artists to have all their albums released as compact discs.
Source: James Beaty/mcalesternews.com
Stella McCartney got candid about her career trajectory and the realities of the fashion industry this week while speaking at the WWD Apparel + Retail CEO Summit in New York. Known for never using fur or leather, the designer also doubled down on the importance of both style and sustainability.
She told WWD’s Bridget Foley, who moderated the talk: “When I started, I was Paul McCartney’s daughter. That was the only headline I had. I came to fashion with that label. I had to shake that puppy off for a while.”
It wasn’t until this year that McCartney leaned into her family history with the launch of the “All Together Now” collection, inspired by The Beatles’ film “Yellow Submarine.” She said, “I definitely avoided The Beatles for a period of time. That’s why I went into fashion and not music. I didn’t want to give people the easy route with me. It took time.”
Source: Nikara Johns/footwearnews.com
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Ringo Starr has recalled the time he discovered that his Beatles bandmate John Lennon had been killed.
The legendary musician was murdered by obsessed fan Mark Chapman on December 8, 1980. Lennon had been shot four times at close range outside his Manhattan residence.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Beatles drummer Starr opened up to Foo Fighters‘ Dave Grohl about the moment he was told the tragic news.
“When John went, I was in the Bahamas. I was getting a phone call from my stepkids in L.A. saying, ‘Something’s happened to John’,” he explained. “And then they called and said, ‘John’s dead’. And I didn’t know what to do.”
Revealing that he “still well[s] up that some bastard shot him”, Starr went on to detail his actions in the immediate aftermath of Lennon’s death.
Source: Tom Skinner/nme.com
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When Ringo Starr decided to record a cover of one of the last songs written by John Lennon, the Beatles drummer knew he wanted former bandmate Paul McCartney to play bass.
Then, his record producer found a way to bring in a bit of the late George Harrison.
The producer, Jack Douglas, inserted strings from “Here Comes the Sun” - one of the few Beatles hits written by Harrison - into the Starr’s recording of the song “Grow Old with Me.”
“We’re all on it now,” Starr, in an interview with Reuters, said of the musical reunion. “I had nothing to do with that.”
“Grow Old with Me” is a single on Starr’s new album called “What’s My Name.” Lennon had recorded a demo of “Grow Old with Me” for his 1980 release “Double Fantasy,” but the song never made it onto that album.
Source: Rollo Ross/reuters.com
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If there’s one thing Beatles fans have always wanted, it’s “more Beatles.” Otherwise, it’s hard to imagine the endless reissues being successful. In the last few months (i.e., 50 years later) alone, we’ve seen an Abbey Road reissue and heard of a pricey vinyl singles collection coming in November.
So when the band returned from India in 1968 with tons of new songs, it didn’t seem like a negative. “Paul [McCartney] must have done about a dozen,” John Lennon said then. “George [Harrison] says he’s got six. I wrote 15. And look what meditation has done for Ringo — after all this time he wrote his first song.”
But the band couldn’t come close to cramming all that music on one record. For a group that usually released tightly produced, single-disc albums, something would have to give. (Indeed, many things gave during the wild sessions that produced the White Album.)
Producer George Martin, often considered the fifth Beatle, was among those who thought a double album was a bad idea. And he told the band about it at the time.
Source: cheatsheet.com
After The Beatles broke up, the questions didn’t stop coming. People were still listening to the Fab Four’s records throughout the 1970s and wanted to know everything — the meaning behind songs, who wrote and played what, and any other details a Beatle might divulge. (That hasn’t really changed.)
Maybe the most popular topic was whether John Lennon or Paul McCartney wrote the main part of a Lennon-McCartney classic. Once an interviewer got that answer, they usually shifted to the inspiration for the song and how it got made (who played what, etc).
Fortunately for Beatles fans who enjoy in-depth looks at the music, John and Paul usually obliged. However, the meaning behind a few songs has remained obscure over the years. “And Your Bird Can Sing” (Revolver) is one of them.
Source: cheatsheet.com
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Looking back at the Beatles’ darkest hour, it’s easy to point to the White Album sessions (1968). After all, there was so much negative energy John Lennon and Paul McCartney almost fought in the studio. And that’s not mentioning how Ringo quit the band for a few weeks that August.
Meanwhile, George Harrison had written some of his best work (“While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Long, Long, Long”) but still had trouble getting his band mates interested in his songs. Indeed, the White Album didn’t come easy.
But The Beatles did finish their double album without breaking up. In the January ’69 Let It Be sessions, you could argue band relations were just as bad while the results were significantly worse. (George called it “the low of all-time.”) This time around, there was an actual fistfight in the studio.
That incident, combined with an argument with Paul, led directly to George walking out on the group. But John didn’t seem worried about George’s absence at all. He had suggestions for what song they should play and who might replace their departed lead guitarist.
Source: cheatsheet.com
If The Beatles were down one band member, it wasn’t the end of the world. In most cases, Paul McCartney would pick up the slack and the recording would go on. A famous example came in 1969, when John Lennon asked Paul to be his backing band on “The Ballad of John and Yoko.”
That track went all the way to No. 1 on the UK charts. By then, Paul had a lot of practice sitting in for Ringo. During the contentious White Album sessions of ’68, Paul played drums on four tracks, including “Dear Prudence” and “Martha My Dear.”
The band needed a replacement for Ringo because the drummer split down in August after he’d had enough of the bad vibes in the studio. Whether waiting for hours for someone to show up or having Paul criticize his playing, Ringo’d had his fill.
Instead of shutting the White Album sessions down for a while, The Beatles decided to keep going. And the three remaining band members all took a crack at drums on “Back in the USSR.”
Source: cheatsheet.com
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The Beatles drummer Ringo Starr discussed the fiftieth anniversary of the group’s eleventh studio album, Abbey Road and the song that Starr wrote on the album entitled Octopus’ Garden which was written when he left The Beatles temporarily in a new interview. Ringo Starr revealed what almost killed Paul McCartney recently.
“I’d left the band because it was too crazy and too tense. I just said, “I’m going,” and I got Maureen — my wife at the time, God rest her soul — and the kids, and we went to Sardinia [Italy]. And it just happened: While I’m there, Peter Sellers had his boat there, and so we went out for a day on his boat. I was just hanging out talking to the captain, and he was telling me that octopuses go ’round the ocean finding shiny stones and things to put around their cave entrance. So it’s like their garden. And at the time, thanks to marijuana, it seemed like the best idea I’d ever heard!”
Source: Mike Mazzarone/alternativenation.net
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In 1962, as The Beatles began to make a name for themselves in Liverpool, they were handed an audition by major label Decca Records to which the group rocked up and performed ‘Love of The Loved’.
The track, which was a mainstay of The Quarrymen’s live setlist of the time and proved popular with their then cult following, was mainly written by Paul McCartney but is now classed as part of the extensive Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership.
The band, who regarded ‘Love of The Loved’ as one of their strongest tracks at the time, surprisingly decided to never officially release the track having signed their record deal and instead handed the material over to their fellow Liverpudlian Cilla Black who used it to kickstart her career.
Source: faroutmagazine.co.uk
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Ever since the Beatles broke up in the 1970s, music fans desperately wanted them to come back together. They never did, but occasionally surviving members of the Beatles have collaborated. Ringo Starr recently released a song called “Grow Old with Me.” Let’s see how this song manages to reunite the Beatles in its own special way.“Grow Old with Me” is a song written by John Lennon and Yoko Ono that was included on the 1984 album Milk and Honey. The song is a plaintive ballad about a man’s desire to grow old with someone, making it lyrically similar to the Beatles’ song “When I’m Sixty-Four.” The song is especially poignant because it was released after John’s untimely death; despite John and Yoko’s desire to grow old together, they never could. The song also works quite well coming from Ringo, as he and his wife, Barbara Bach, have been together for nearly forty years.
Source: cheatsheet.com
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The Beatles broke up five decades ago, but you would never know it from looking at the charts. In late September the group reissued the 50th anniversary edition of its 1969 album “Abbey Road,” which hit No. 3 on the Billboard 200 in the U.S. and the top spot in the U.K.
The deluxe reissue features a remixed version of the original album and also includes two discs’ worth of previously unheard material, a 5.1 surround-sound mix on Blu-ray, and a 100-page hardcover book. At a price just under $100, it’s easy to see why someone would be tempted to buy it, even if they already own the original version of the album.
The physical media sales are only part of the story. Billboard noted that to reach the No. 3 spot, the group had sold 81,000 physical albums, but according to Forbes, the group’s music has been streamed on Spotify 1.7 billion times in 2019. The group doing 30% of that streaming is between the ages of 18 and 24, followed by 25- to 29-year-olds, at 17%. That means almost half of the streaming is coming from people under the age of 30.
Source: Daniel Bukszpan/cnbc.com
It wasn’t any state secret that The Beatles used drugs. Looking back at Rubber Soul, George Harrison spoke of the effect the band’s use of marijuana consumption had on that record. And Paul McCartney said he wrote Revolver’s “Got to Get You Into My Life” about weed.
Of course, John Lennon’s 1968 arrest for possession of hash removed any lingering doubts. But most of that was going on outside of the studio. Apart from the occasional forays — as John and Paul had during the Abbey Road sessions — most Beatles recordings feature the band sober enough to walk straight.
George Martin, the band’s father-figure producer (and head of Parlophone Records), certainly ran a clean studio during his early years working with the band. However, by 1968, the rules had changed a bit.
Source: cheatsheet.com
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