Beatles News
In March 1964, when Yoko Ono was 31, she performed Cut Piece, a piece that she would go on to stage five more times in her life—four times in the 1960s, and once more in 2003, at age 70. In Cut Piece, Ono sits on a stage in her best clothes with a placid expression as she instructs audience members to, one by one, take the pair of scissors she’s placed beside her and cut off a small piece of her clothing. In the ’60s, these performances took menacing turns: male participants, products of the era’s fraught understanding of sexual freedom, felt emboldened to strip Ono bare. Spectators were turned into passive witnesses.
Cut Piece—perhaps Ono’s greatest work—was lauded as a feminist statement about the subordination of women at a time when feminism had yet to meaningfully pervade the avant-garde. Although the performance testifies to the ease with which women are objectified, it communicates multitudes through the prism of Ono’s body: it also tells the story of her native Japan’s devastation during and after World War II, which she lived through as a child. And, it’s about her relationship with John Lennon, which transformed her private life into a public spectacle, as well as the sacrifice and surrender that Ono, a passionate anti-war activist, considers a precondition for peace.
Yoko, a new biography about Ono by David Sheff, opens with a prologue about Cut Piece, introducing her—as provocateur, martyr, and social experimenter—through the lens of her own creation. Sheff, who came up as a journalist in the eighties and nineties, knew Ono and Lennon when the latter was still alive, and his previously published interviews with the couple (and, more recently, just Ono) inform large portions of the book.
Source: artnews.com/Beatrice Loayza
It is to Paul McCartney‘s credit that he has never based his songwriting or recording tendencies on what people expect from him. He follows his muse wherever it takes him, and that’s why his albums tend to be packed with variety.
For example, the 1975 Wings album Venus and Mars is a mostly rocking affair, as McCartney reestablished the band as a full unit. But he also included on that album “You Gave Me the Answer,” which hearkens back to a much earlier era of music.
“Answer” the Call
After a few years of false starts and disappointments, Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles band Wings hit its stride in a major way with the 1973 album Band on the Run. Ironically, that album was delivered by a piecemeal unit, as the group had been decimated by defections to just three members.
Coming off that triumph, McCartney looked to once again beef up the Wings roster so they could tour effectively. The band added two new members for the 1975 album Venus and Mars, which leaned into a hard-rocking sound so listeners knew what the reconfigured Wings lineup could deliver.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Jim Beviglia
The recording of 1968's 'The White Album' was a tumultuous time for The Beatles. The avant-garde album was the band's follow up to their incredibly successful 1967 work 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' captured the zeitgeist of the so-called summer of love and spent 27 weeks at the top of the Record Retailer chart in the United Kingdom.
'The White Album' sessions were notoriously feisty. Ringo Starr left the band for a period as they recorded 'Back in the USSR'. The drummer was fed up with the mood, as The Beatles clashed.
About that period of recording, Paul McCartney said: "There was a lot of friction during that album. We were just about to break up, and that was tense in itself". John Lennon later added: "The break-up of The Beatles can be heard on that album."
Another song on the album which divided the band was 'Revolution 9'. The track is a sound collage and began as the extended ending to John's song 'Revolution', a song warning against violent revolutionary tactics that was released in several versions by the band in 1968.
Yoko Ono and George Harrison worked with John on 'Revolution 9', which John wanted to be a sonic representation of an uprising. About it, he said: "'Revolution 9' was an unconscious picture of what I actually think will happen when it happens; just like a drawing of a revolution.
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"All the thing was made with loops. I had about 30 loops going, fed them onto one basic track. I was getting classical tapes, going upstairs and chopping them up, making it backwards and things like that, to get the sound effects.
"One thing was an engineer’s testing voice saying, ‘This is EMI test series number nine’. I just cut up whatever he said and I’d number nine it.
Source: liverpoolecho.co.uk/Dan Haygarth
The tape is said to be a demo for the Fab Four to sign to Decca back in 1962. A rare Beatles recording has been unearthed in a record store in Canada. The tape is thought to be a rare recording of a session they had to sign with Decca. History though would detail how Decca passed on the band, leading to their legacy with George Martin and Parlophone.
While Sir Paul McCartney continues to clean up previous songs by The Beatles through the use of artificial intelligence, will it be enough for a recent discovery found in Canada? Billboard reported that a rare, 15 track demo of The Beatles was unearthed in a record store in Vancouver, with the record store’s owner thinking he had just found a bootleg of the band - a bootleg being an unofficial record of either a band’s demos or live recordings.
A tape long thought lost recorded by The Beatles before their debut album through Parlophone has been unearthed in Canada.A tape long thought lost recorded by The Beatles before their debut album through Parlophone has been unearthed in Canada.
“I just figured it was a tape off a bootleg record,” Rob Frith, the owner of Neptoon Records posted on social media, “after hearing it last night for the first time, it sounds like a master tape. The quality is unreal.
Source: yorkshirepost.co.uk/Benjamin Jackson
Musical genres often weave in and out of themselves. There is a little pop to be found in rock, hip-hop to be found in pop, and country to be found pretty much everywhere these days…While that melting pot of sound is celebrated by most musicians, there is one genre in particular than John Lennon could never get on board with incorporating. Find out which genre Lennon hated, below.
The Genre John Lennon Hated: “Even More Stupid Than Rock and Roll”
Jazz isn’t a genre for everyone. In fact, it’s likely one of the most hated genres of music. That’s likely due to its unique musical language. In many ways, it’s a genre made for musicians–almost as if you need a whole new vocabulary to be able to understand it. While many rock stars of Lennon’s age infused jazz elements into their music, the former Beatle couldn’t stomach it.
While rock music is certainly not the most austere genre, Lennon once called jazz “even more stupid than rock and roll.” He found that jazz lacked direction and sounded more like a jumbled mess of chords and melodies. While many would likely agree with him, his opinion seemed to be informed by the Beatles’ early days, when they were shut out of many a jazz club…
“We were anti-jazz,” Lennon once said. “I think it is sh** music, even more stupid than rock and roll. Jazz never gets anywhere, never does anything, it’s always the same, and all they do is drink pints of beer. We hated it because in those early days, they wouldn’t let us play at those clubs.”
Source: Alex Hopper/americansongwriter.com
If you’d been taking bets in 1970 on which former Beatle would be the most successful in the new decade, George Harrison was definitely – to borrow the name of one of his future hits – the dark horse. But as he’d sing in that tune, “Baby, it looks like I’ve been breaking out.”
In November, he turned the page on the Fabs with All Things Must Pass, a triple album brimming with artistic confidence and gorgeous, melancholy songs, not to mention the world’s first-ever God-conscious Number 1 single.
The album topped the charts around the globe, earned two Grammy nominations and had critics spouting superlatives about the formerly quiet one. As Melody Maker put it, “Garbo talks! – Harrison is free!”
Free maybe, but as 1971 unfolded, he was caught up in all kinds of trouble and strife. There was the prolonged legal drama of the Beatles’ split, the newly filed copyright infringement case over My Sweet Lord (in the context of its similarity to the Chiffons’ He’s So Fine), a marriage on the rocks and a drug-addled producer who was losing his mind.
Source: guitarworld.com
To this, George had single-handedly taken on the Concert for Bangladesh, a combination concert-album-film, all to raise money for a country beset by natural disaster and genocide.
“Rain” remains one of the Beatles’ most beloved tracks. It’s a fan-favorite for its experimental production. How did John Lennon come up with “Rain?” According to him, this masterpiece was a gift from a higher power. Learn more about why Lennon thought he got a bout of divine intervention, below.
If the rain comes
They run and hide their heads
They might as well be dead
If the rain comes
If the rain comes
When the sun shines
They slip into the shade
And sip their lemonade
When the sun shines
When the sun shines
While trying to compose “Rain,” Lennon ran into some road blocks. He had the bones of the song fleshed out, but it wasn’t worthy of release in its current state, according to Lennon. He decided to take a smoke break–a marijuana smoke break that is. Despite it being a way to kick back, it ultimately became just the ticket for Lennon to finish this track.
“I got home from the studio and I was stoned out of my mind on marijuana,” Lennon once explained. “As I usually do, I listened to what I’d recorded that day. Somehow it got on backwards and I sat there, transfixed, with the earphones on, with a big hash joint.”
“The drums became a giant drum kit,” Paul McCartney added. “If you slow down a footstep it becomes a giant’s footstep, it adds a few tones to the weight of the person. So we got a big, ponderous, thunderous backing and then we worked on top of that as normal.”
Source: Alex Hopper/americansongwriter.com
There's no denying the vast impact both groups had on the evolution of popular music.
After The Beatles kickstarted the British Invasion, the entire world took notice of the Liverpudlian whippersnappers and their generational songwriting.
Opening the gateway for a number of British bands to succeed across the Atlantic and around the world, their cultural fingerprints are still felt today. Though The Beatles may have become the biggest band in popular music history, America already had their own music idols at the same time bands like The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, Small Faces, The Who, The Zombies, and many others began flooding the airwaves across the Atlantic.
The Beach Boys were a cultural behemoth in their own right, and epitomised youth values in the US - particularly on the West Coast - more than the Fab Four ever could in the beginning.
The Beach Boys reveal how Pet Sounds influenced one of The Beatles' biggest albums. Barbie's Margot Robbie refused to listen to The
In 1963, Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Dennis Wilson, Bruce Johnston, and Carl Wilson rode the wave to number three in the US Billboard charts with 'Surfin' U.S.A.'
A year later, many groups of their ilk were largely forgotten about, but The Beach Boys kept pace with their British peers.
Source: goldradio.com/Thomas Edward
The Beatles fans were left split after a fan suggested there is a better album in their discography than Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, with an album released before it tipped as their 'best'.
Fans of the legendary Liverpudlian rock group The Beatles are split on which of their albums sounds better than Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The record catapulted the Fab Four into the history books, with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison's album still considered one of the greatest of all time. Fans are now suggesting there may be one album released before Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band that is actually better.
A post to the r/Beatles subreddit had users discuss whether there was an album which could better the achievement of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Many were split on one suggestion, with some saying the album should be discredited as it is just "four number one singles" on the second half.
The original post suggests Magical Mystery Tour, an album The Beatles made to tie in with a movie of the same name, is far superior to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Source: themirror.com/Ewan Gleadow
George Harrison is as foundational to electronic music as Black Sabbath is to metal. Welcome to No Skips, the weekly column where we take an album track by track to see if any tracks are skippable or not! The verdict is pretty simple this week, given the Beatles member released his 1969 album “Electronic Sound” as a two-track composition.
I admire Harrison’s confidence to drop this dookie of an album in this era of the Beatles’ commercial height, as “Abbey Road” would use the Moog synthesizer that defines “Electronic Sound” in clever and less annoying ways. However, having listened to abrasive noise music acts in the past, part of me enjoys “Electronic Sound,” a sentiment that most listeners from the 1960s and today couldn’t fathom to share.
Album covers got riskier in the ‘60s, but Harrison’s may take the cake. The only comparisons I can make are to the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat and drawings that kids in therapy are forced to create to portray problems happening in the home. The atmosphere in the Beatles’ recording studios during this time was tumultuous and this may have been Harrison’s way of showing that all was not well behind the scenes for what was considered the peak of the Beatles.
Source: dailycampus.com/James Fitzpatrick
