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Beatles News
This list started when Alastair Campbell tried, via Twitter, to persuade Abba to object to Theresa May jiving on to the stage at the Conservative Party conference to “Dancing Queen”. The band had objected to the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party when it played “Mamma Mia” at rallies (changing the “Mia” to “Pia” after their leader, Pia Kjaersgaard, Robert Boston told me). But Björn Ulvaeus, asked by journalists, refused to comment on the British prime minister’s homage.
1. Abba: The band’s publishers also served John McCain with a cease and desist letter for using “Take a Chance on Me” in 2008. A somewhat un-reassuring political message, I thought, nominated by No Ordinary Cat.
Source: John Rentoul/independent.co.uk
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He was the Dundee photographer who took the iconic image of one of music’s most famous albums.
Paul McCartney chose Iain MacMillan’s shot for the Abbey Road cover in 1969.
The street would eventually become as famous as the music itself thanks to the photograph Iain produced.
Mr MacMillan’s work with John Lennon and Yoko Ono also included working on record sleeves for Live Peace in Toronto, Give Peace a Chance and Happy Xmas (War is Over).
He also shot the album cover for Something’s Burning by Kenny Rogers and took portraits of various celebrities from the world of sport, acting and pop music including Stevie Wonder, Twiggy, Floyd Paterson and Maggie Smith.
Mr MacMillan’s rich legacy in print is now being fondly remembered by those who knew him best to mark what would have been his 80th birthday.
Source: thecourier.co.uk
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Paul McCartney announced the latest installments of his ongoing Archive Collection, a pair of deluxe reissues dedicated to the Wings-era LPs 1971’s Wild Life and 1973’s Red Rose Speedway. Both reissues arrive December 7th.
For the 3CD/1DVD limited deluxe edition of Wild Life, the newly remastered original album will be paired with two discs worth of rough mixes, home recordings, b-sides, single edits and other unreleased material, including a minute-long home recording of “Indeed I Do.” The DVD for the set boasts rare footage of acoustic home videos, rehearsals and more.
“The Wild Life deluxe package includes a 128-page book written by David Fricke telling the story behind the album
Source: Daniel Kreps/Rolling Stones
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It seems fitting that, when you read about the creation of The Travelling Wilburys in 1988, it's hard to sort out which stories are true and which are apocryphal. After all, the five megastars who made up the supergroup went by pseudonyms and claimed to be half-brothers: Nelson (George Harrison), Otis (Jeff Lynne), Lefty (Roy Orbison), Charlie T., Jr. (Tom Petty) and Lucky (Bob Dylan). Other legends abound: Did the name “Wilbury” come from Lynne telling George Harrison, during sessions for the former Beatle's comeback record Cloud Nine, that “we'll bury mistakes in the mix”? Did the four other members ask Orbison to join the band right before he went on stage? Did George Harrison announce the project for the first time during a radio interview? The answers are no, kind of and maybe — at least according to Jeff Lynne, who recalls the group’s formation as quick and simple.
Source: Joel Keller/billboard.com
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Having played nearly 3,000 shows with Elton John since 1972, Davey Johnstone — the Rocket Man’s trusted musical director and guitarist — says it’s tough to pick favorites. Maybe Thursday’s or Friday’s stop at Madison Square Garden as part of Elton’s long farewell tour will end up on his list. But there is one 1974 concert at the Garden that stands out from all the rest they have done in New York.
That’s when John Lennon joined them onstage on Thanksgiving Day as part of a deal he’d made when Elton played piano on the Beatle legend’s single “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night.”
“I was at the studio at the time,” says Johnstone, “and Elton said, ‘Well, I’ll play on it, but if it gets to No. 1, you have to come onstage with us at Madison Square Garden.’ And John went, ‘Yeah, OK’ because he never expected it to be a No. 1 hit, which it was. So John had to make good on his promise.”
Source: By Chuck Arnold/nypost.com
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It’s been almost fifty years since The Beatles‘ seminal White Album was released, and despite its age, it still manages to make news the world over.
In light of the upcoming anniversary release of White Album Super Deluxe Edition, a previously unheard demo of While My Guitar Gently Weeps has been made public for the first time since it was recorded.
Only a few seconds in, George interrupts the Abbey Road crew: “Maybe you’d have to give him [Paul] his own mic”.
George also sings the original lines he later ended up discarding: “I look from the wings at the play you are staging / As I’m sitting here doing nothing but ageing.”
This demo gives a glimpse into the band’s refinement process. It took another three months of recording to get the final product, the version which we all know and love.
Source: hhhhappy.com
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October 9 saw the annual lighting of the Imagine Peace Tower of Light on Viðey outside of Reykjavík.
Created by Yoko Ono in 2007, the Imagine Peace Tower stands as a tribute for Ono’s late husband, musician John Lennon. The tower is illuminated between the October 9 until the December 8, marking the birth and death of Lennon. The tower stands tall as a symbol for the world peace campaign Lennon and Ono began during the ‘60s.
During this year’s lighting of the tower, spectators were able to see a video message featuring Ono before the peace tower was lit. The path toward the light tower was signposted by a romantic trail of torches. Although the drizzly weather dampened the visibility of the surroundings, a spectacular surprise display of the Northern Lights were a memorable addition to the event.
Source: Words by Mulan/grapevine.is
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The Beatles may arguably have had the first fandom ever, so insane was Beatlemania.
But every day the lives of men and women around the world are changed by fandom, whether that’s a film star, a book, a TV show, a game, or a boy band, and new documentary I Used To Be Normal: A Boyband Fangirl Story tells the wonderful stories of four women who have had their lives dramatically changed by their love of a boyband – Backstreet Boys, One Direction, Take That and The Beatles.
From the craziest thing she ever did to get close to her idols to the moment that left her heartbroken, 68-year-old Susan tells Metro.co.uk what it means to be a life-long Beatles fangirl…
Susan, The Beatles:
Susan, 68, has been a Beatles fan since the band’s early days in the 1960s but says the craziest thing she ever did to get close to the boys took place when she was 14.
Source: Rebecca Lewis/metro.co.uk
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Beatles fans are going to get their fix this weekend.
This year’s annual London Beatles Festival was canceled due to downtown construction, but organizers have instead put together a two-day mini-festival to whet fans’ appetites for 2019.
Two Groovy Nights, sponsored by A Taste of Britain, is on at the Palace Theatre Friday and Saturday, featuring a renowned Ringo Starr tribute artist, Ringer Star (Mike Callahan), and Canada’s top tribute band, The Caverners.
Saturday afternoon there will also be a forum of music and Beatles experts talking about the band, which continues to influence pop culture more than 50 years after they arrived on the scene.
“We scaled back the festival after last year’s three-day success (5,000-plus fans turned out), but we still wanted an event for Beatles fans to whet their appetites for next year when we’ll be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ Abbey Road album,” said organizer Paul Rivard.
“That will be big.”
Source: lfpress.com
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The Beatles were already a monstrously successful band before the summer 1967 release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. But that album brought them to a new level of cultural prominence — one that began to transcend pop music or even celebrity. Sgt. Pepper was arguably the first event-album, the LP that wore its own experimentalism on its sleeve and forced any serious-minded people to reckon with what the Beatles were doing. You could not be a culturally informed person and dismiss the Beatles in 1967. It just wasn’t possible. After Sgt. Pepper, the Beatles stopped being an extremely popular band of pop musicians. Instead, they became, more or less, goodwill ambassadors to the entire human race. That’s not an easy position to be in.
Source: Tom Breihan @tombreihan/ stereogum.com
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Prague’s John Lennon Wall on Kampa Island near Čertovka, is one of the Czech capital’s most frequently Instagrammed locations, a crowd-sourced mural visited by hundreds of tourists daily.
Called “Zeď Johna Lennona” in Czech it was first decorated by an unknown artist who, following the December 1980 assassination of John Lennon, painted a single image of the singer-songwriter and some lyrics on a blank wall across from the French embassy.
Throughout the years the wall filled up with graffiti and Beatles’ lyrics; in the late ’80s, it was the source of a political clash between the communist regime and young Czechs who took to the space to express their grievances.
On November 17, 2014, the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, the Lennon wall was painted completely white by a group of student-artists activists who left the words “wall is over,” a play on the Lennon tune “Happy Xmas (War Is Over).”
Source: Katrina Modrá/news.expats.cz
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If you follow the 610 Stompers, the star of an amusing new Paul McCartney music video may look familiar.
The first in a series of videos for “Come On To Me,” the latest single from Sir Paul’s current “Egypt Station” album, features Mike Marina, a proud Stomper since 2014.
Until the concluding scene, Marina is the only person in the clip, which was shot mostly at Rubensteins, the high-end men’s clothing store at the corner of Canal Street and St. Charles Avenue.
Marina plays a security guard named Fred who, bored by the Muzak on the store’s speakers, cues up “Come On To Me.” He then lip-syncs and dances his way through the song and the store, all unabashed, big-eyed enthusiasm and joy.
His epic performance, informed by his Carnival season street dancing with the Stompers, is meant to inspire “amusement or bewilderment,” he noted recently. “One of the two.”
Source: KEITH SPERA/theadvocate.com
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John Lennon, who was the main writer of the song with McCartney as co-writer, said to Playboy in 1980 that it was about an affair he was having: “I always had some kind of affair going, so I was trying to be sophisticated in writing in such a smoke-screen way that you couldn't tell.” When asked about the title itself, he answered: “I don't know how the hell I got to 'Norwegian Wood'"
Sir Paul McCartney: “John told Playboy Magazine that he hadn't the faintest idea where the title came from but I do.
“Peter Asher (of Peter and Gordon, brother of Jane Asher and roommate of McCartney in their house) had his room done out in a wood, a lot of people were then decorating their places in wood, Norwegian wood.
“It was pine really, cheap pine. But it's not as good a title, “Cheap Pine, Baby"…
(Source of McCartney's quote: Many Years From Now, Barry Miles)
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For the latest episode of their "Inside The Studio" podcast, host Joe Levy and the iHeartMedia team made a very special trip to meet with Paul McCartney in Winnipeg surrounding a show on his current tour in support of his chart-topping Egypt Station album.
Paul McCartney telling stories about John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, sharing secrets from the Beatles in the studio, on living a normal life while being one of the most famous people in the world and more is every bit the magic you would expect.
This is Paul McCartney on "Get Back," on "Penny Lane," on Sgt. Peppers, on "Blackbird." Just enjoy.
Paul McCartney: I think everyone, like me, who believes in climate change, and that's a lot of people, we're looking at these climate accords and these meetings, there was one in Japan, there was one in Copenhagen, and as these came up we'd all be looking at it and going, "Oh, this will be the one. We're going to do something about it.
Source: Steve Baltin/forbes.com
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A pair of artists visiting Chicago for a month to paint messages of love on buildings didn’t plan to paint John Lennon’s face and the lyrics to his “Imagine” on a garage in Bucktown.
It just felt right.
“We like to freestyle. We paint concepts based on the cultural background of the area we are painting. We like to paint murals for the community,” said Resa Piece.
Piece, a street art muralist and her boyfriend, a graffiti writer who goes by the name Menace Two, are based in Queens, New York.
The inseparable couple — who say they’ve not spent more than 24 hours apart since they began dating a little over a year ago — started their cross-country road trip in September in Philadelphia and arrived in Chicago on Oct. 1.
Their goal is to paint murals that express the concept of love and kindness in various cities, according to Piece.
Source: Alisa Hauser @BCC_WPB
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