Beatles News
Beatles fanatics have the chance to see the world as John Lennon did. A pair of his tinted, circular Windsor Glasses are heading for auction at Propstore in October and have been given an upper estimate of £300,000 ($402,000).
Lennon wore the pair of American Optical gilt framed glasses from 1973 to early 1974, a turbulent period of the musician’s life that he would later call his “lost weekend.” He was drinking heavily, partying in public, and on a break from Yoko Ono.
The story of the glasses echoes this rambunctiousness. In 1974, Lennon was watching the Smothers Brothers at the Troubadour Club in Los Angeles with his friend and fellow musician Harry Nilsson when the pair began heckling the rock comedy duo. Soon a fight erupted. Before being thrown out, Lennon lost his glasses in the ruckus and they were picked up by the wife of Tommy Smothers. As the story goes, the Smothers brought the glasses to an afterparty at the house of the actor Peter Lawford and the guests spent the rest of the evening donning Lennon’s eyewear.
“Lennon is fondly remembered as a pioneering musician and a strong advocate for peace, and during his career one accessory became his trademark: his circular glasses,” the auction house wrote in a statement.
Lennon first wore Windsor glasses as part of his costume for his role of Musketeer Gripweed in How I Won the War (1967), Richard Lester’s comedy that critiques the British military, monarchy, and class system. He never looked back and the round glasses remain an indelible feature of Lennon’s icon.
The “lost weekend” glasses have appeared twice before at auction. First at Sotheby’s in 1978, where they were given an estimate of $4,000 before selling for an undisclosed price, and second at Christie’s in 2008 where they sold for $78,000. In 2019, a pair of sunglasses that Lennon left on back seat of a car sold at Sotheby’s for $184,000.
The glasses are one of several Beatles-related lots in the Propstore’s Music Memorabilia Live Auction. Most intriguing is a scrap of fabric that Lennon used to protect himself from the Spanish sun during the filming of Lester’s film. He called it his “Shroud of Tourin,” a spoof on the controversial Shroud of Turin that claims to hold the blood and image of Jesus Christ. Lennon covered it with doodles in pencil. In one, he depicts himself wearing two pairs of glasses and a Batman symbol on his chest. In another, he sticks a cross on top of a hill and pairs it with the word “Elvis.” The shroud is signed and dated and has been given an estimate of £25,000 to £50,000 ($33,500 to $67,000).
Source: Richard Whiddington/news.artnet.com
In his mind, Ringo Starr never stopped being 24. When his second son Jason was fretting about turning 40 in 2007, telling his dad that he felt like he was 27, the world’s most famous drummer was compelled to administer a gentle parental put-down. “I said you can’t be 27, I’m only 24,” he tells me, speaking by video call from his home in Los Angeles. He chuckles.
His actual age is . . . well, Ringo doesn’t really like seeing it in the cold glare of print. Suffice to say he first turned 24 in 1964, the year of the “British Invasion”, when the US fell hard for The Beatles and “I Love Ringo” badges were all the rage. In the book The Beatles Anthology, he described this as the moment when, having been the last to join the group, he felt fully accepted: “Suddenly we were equal.”
The perpetual 24-year-old certainly looks trim and fit. There’s no trace of grey in his wavy dark hair and beard. He wears tinted glasses and a necklace with a peace sign symbol. The collar of his denim jacket is upturned in classic rock ’n’ roll style. He speaks from his recording studio in the Beverly Hills house where he and his wife Barbara Bach live.
Ringo — Sir Richard Starkey for official purposes — recently finished recording the vocal and drum parts for a follow-up to the country album he released earlier this year, Look Up. An electric guitar hangs on the wall behind him, covered with stars: a present from one of his sons. A star-shaped abstract painting with vivid streaks of colour is propped next to it.
Source: Ludovic Hunter-Tilney/ft.com
Ringo & His All-Starr Band, made up of Steve Lukather, Colin Hay, Hamish Stuart, Warren Ham, Buck Johnson and Gregg Bissonette, are set to return to The Venetian Theatre Sept. 26 and 27.
It all started by picking up a phone book and calling his friends.
“What a great idea in 1989 someone mentioned putting a band together,” Starr told Las Vegas Now.
In addition to the performances, Ringo Starr’s original artwork is on display and for sale at Animazing Gallery in the Grand Canal Shoppes at The Venetian Resort, Las Vegas.
This is his first art exhibit since 2022, the first show to feature his original paintings and the first time he’s seen the exhibit.
All of his artwork is for sale, with 100% of artist proceeds going to the Lotus Foundation.
Animazing Gallery owner Nick Leone said it’s an honor to partner with Ringo Starr.
For show tickets, artwork information and more visit ringostarr.com.
Source: Jillian Lopez/8newsnow.com
John Lennon's son, Sean Ono Lennon, revealed his father "resented having to be a Beatle" in the end.
The late frontman of the legendary Liverpool group was done with being a part of the "pop machine" in the years that followed the "Yesterday" band's split in 1970. He wanted to focus on being a "radical artist and activist", as inspired by his wife, Yoko Ono.
However, Sean, 49, insists his father, who was shot dead outside his residence at The Dakota in New York City aged 40 in 1980, never lost his love for music.
His son was asked about the period, including the pair of One to One benefit concerts in 1972 at Madison Square Garden in New York City, which marked Lennon's only full-length solo concerts in front of a paying audience after leaving The Beatles, and he dispelled the notion that his father had lost his passion for music.
Speaking to Chris Hawkins on BBC Radio 6 Music, he said, "I think there's a bit of a myth about that. I don't feel that he'd fallen out of love with music. I think he'd fallen out of love with a certain kind of fame. I think he'd fallen out of love with having to be a part of a machinery, of a pop machine, you know. I think that was - even though he was always rebellious within that framework, I think that he still resented, you know, having to be a Beatle in a way. I think he really wanted to move on from that, you know?"
The "Imagine" singer's son continued, "I think his relationship with my mum was the catalyst for it and the symbol of it in his mind. And he wanted to move on and be a radical artist and activist with, you know, this girl, Yoko, who he had fallen in love with. So, I think he was trying to find a new way to do things and looking for a new way to do things."
Sean believes his father struggled when John Lennon and Yoko Ono as Plastic Ono Band's 1972 double album, "Some Time in New York City," which flopped and was annihilated by critics.
Source: Kevin Zelman/komonews.com
As 1999 was rolling to a close, George Harrison should have been ringing in the new year with his family at his Friar Park Estate in Henley-on-Thames, England.
Instead, the former Beatle was lying in a hospital with 40 stab wounds after an intruder broke into his home on December 30 and left him fighting for his life.
British comedian Eric Idle recalls the incident on the latest episode of the Adam Buxton Podcast. A founding member of Monty Python's Flying Circus, Idle was both Harrison's friend and associate. Harrison appeared in Idles' satirical Beatles take-off All You Need Is Cash and even re-mortgaged his home to help finance Monty Python's 1979 film Life of Brian.
The attacker was Michael Abram, a 34-year-old suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. After breaking in, Abram encountered Harrison, leading to a prolonged fight in which the guitarist suffered a punctured lung and multiple head injuries.
As Idle tells Buxton, the incident shook Harrison to his core. “He was very disturbed,” he says. “I have never, ever seen him more disturbed. It was really shocking, because they fought for 20 minutes.” Idle adds that he had been attacked “with a butcher's knife,” and was “bleeding to death.”
All the latest guitar news, interviews, lessons, reviews, deals and more, direct to your inbox! He describes Abram as “a crazed guy, off his meds." Abram's was initially looking to kill Paul McCartney but decided to make Harrison his target. "He couldn't find Paul, so it's easier to find Henley," Idle says.
“He came over the wall, smashed in the window, and George, I think, came out because George was the bold one, who told the Hell's Angels to fuck off."
Idle is referring to Harrison throwing Hells Angels members out of the Beatles Apple Corps in the 1960s, after they became disruptive: "He was always the one who came and said, 'No, you've got to fuck off.'"
Source: guitarplayer.com/Phil Weller
Decades after The Beatles made their debut, they're still impacting the landscape of music as we know it today. A big part of their influence was the final album the group would make together: Abbey Road, which was released on September 26, 1969 — 56 years ago today.
In a post on Facebook, Classic Rock Magazine shared a look back at the iconic album in honor of its anniversary, pointing out that it was Paul McCartney who convinced John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr to join him in the studio one more time so they could record together "like the old days."
"Deep down, everyone involved knew that Abbey Road was the last stand, which explains the nothing-to-lose attitude that pervades the material," Classic Rock's Henry Yates wrote. "Side One of the original vinyl holds most of the big-hitting moments, from the swampy judder of 'Come Together' to Harrison’s untouchable 'Something.'"
Yates continued, "And while 'Here Comes The Sun' is a no-brainer, cherrypicking the medley from Side Two was just as rewarding, with 'Golden Slumbers' and 'Carry That Weight.' standing amongst their most lump-in-throat moments."
Not only was Abbey Road significant because it marked the end of the band as they (and the world) knew it, but it was also where so many songs we now know to be classic were born. It's impossible to really sum up the impact of an album like that — and what better way for The Beatles to go out?
How The Beatles Made Abbey Road Happen
According to Rolling Stone, The Beatles reunited with producer George Martin and recorded the album over a period of about six months. It wasn't always smooth sailing, though — things did get rocky at times, especially when the band would butt heads about the business side of the album.
“It was a very happy record,” Martin said. “I guess it was happy because everybody thought it was going to be the last.”
Of course, Abbey Road was just the final album that the band would record; Let It Be was the final one released a year later in 1970. But it's this one that so many fans think of when they think of the end of The Beatles, and even nearly 60 years later, that hasn't changed.
Source: Nicole Pomarico/yahoo.com
A firm favourite topic for Beatles obsessives to kick around during those long-into-the night deliberations is just which of their eleven (we don’t count Magical Mystery Tour or Yellow Submarine, okay!) studio LPs was their singular best.
Whether you’re a Revolver man, an Abbey Road girl or your softest spot is reserved for their 1963 debut Please Please Me (we know there’s a few of you out there), what really isn't a matter of opinion is that on the wider cultural stage, it remains 1967’s Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band that is the most synonymous with the Beatles at the peak of their powers.
For many, it remains the greatest album in pop’s storied history. It’s certainly one of the most interesting from a technical and band narrative point of view, being the first of the Beatles' studio-based career.
In fact, it was this vivid cauldron of a record that solidified the very idea of ‘the album’ in popular culture, and underlined its status in devotees as the most crucial component of an artist's canon.
“The pop revolution was driven by 45s - an LP ‘the prize’ for success and even then comprising two hits and a lot of filling,” said writer David Hepworth in his album-centred book A Fabulous Creation: How the LP Saved Our Lives.
“It was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band that changed all that: not merely a collection of songs but an album - though one might call it a song cycle. After Pepper nothing was ever the same again and the acquisition of albums was an essential part of every student’s life.”
Expanding on Revolver’s initial forays into unknown sonic regions tenfold, Pepper found John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr firmly shunning the trappings of their prior identity as a mass market, entertainment spectacle.
Instead, inspired by the pioneering studio work of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, they decided to use their hard-won global platform to metamorphose into a creative force the likes of which the world had never seen.
Connecting the musical threads that spanned Britain’s past and present - and rippling with the philosophy of the counterculture - the Beatles recast themselves as the house band of the Summer of Love.
Source: musicradar.com/Andy Price
While the Fab Four were responsible for some of the best albums in history, the Empty Glass songwriter was left unmoved by one of The Beatles‘ biggest releases. A trick in the studio, where the vocals were coming out of one side of the stereo and the backing track from the other, would define The Beatles’ sound. It would feature on some of their biggest tracks, but it did little for Townshend, who called it “flippin’ lousy.” He and The Who bass guitarist John Entwistle had been listening to an album by The Beatles shortly before Townshend gave an interview. The interview was seemingly given around the time of Rubber Soul‘s release, an album which changed the future for The Beatles.
An interviewer asked The Who guitarist: “But wouldn’t you say The Beatles and people like that have a certain musical quality?” Townshend replied: “Ooh, that’s a tough question. Actually, this afternoon, John [Entwistle] and I were listening to a stereo LP of The Beatles — in which the voices come out of the one side and the backing track comes out of the other.
“When you actually hear the backing tracks of The Beatles without their voices, they’re flippin’ lousy.” The Beatles’ album has been praised by fans in the decades to follow this interview, with alternate takes and re-releases consistently hailed by listeners old and new.
An early version of Norwegian Wood from The Beatles‘ Rubber Soul album was hailed as “genius” by fans. The Beatles’ Rubber Soul is considered a turning point for the band, with Norwegian Wood featuring lyrics influenced by Bob Dylan. The legendary artist would not, however, influence the sitar featured on the song.
John Lennon had asked George Harrison to add a sitar layer to the song, with the track suggested as a veiled account of an extramarital affair. Harrison’s additions to the song have been hailed as a “genius” inclusion on the track. One user wrote: “I can’t get over how much of a genius George is.”
Source: Ewan Gleadow/cultfollowing.co.uk
As of now, it’s hard to theorize when the relevance of The Beatles will fade. It’s quite trivial to assume when that will be, as there is truly no way to know. Though, as of now, this will not happen anytime soon. However, in terms of a few of their songs, that has already seemingly begun to happen.
“Hey Jude”, “Let It Be”, “Twist And Shout”, and “Get Back” are just a few of The Beatles’ songs that will always stay popular so long as The Beatles stay popular. Although that is not the case for these three Beatles songs, because as time has passed, so has the popularity of these tracks.
“Rocky Raccoon”
Released in 1968 on The Beatles’ self-titled album, better known as The White Album, “Rocky Raccoon” is one of the few songs in which The Beatles dabble in country music. One might argue that sonically speaking, it is one of the more unique tracks released by the Fab Four.
Uniqueness doesn’t lead to longevity, and that is the case for this phenomenal Beatles track. While steadfast and staunch Beatles fans certainly know this song. It seems fans who merely dabble in The Beatles don’t, which is incredibly unfortunate, because this song is a gem.
“I’ve Just Seen A Face”
The Beatles’ 1965 track “I’ve Just Seen A Face” is certainly not one of their most well-known songs. Nevertheless, it is superb and certainly one of the finest tracks from their 1965 album, Help! If you aren’t a Beatlehead, then you have to listen to a lot of their music to come across this one. Consequently, it has become a bit more obscure.
Well, obscure for The Beatles that is, and frankly, it’s not a huge surprise, as this track was not released as a single. Thus, it had no activity on the Billboard Hot 100 or any other major American charts. Is that why it’s fallen down the ranks of popular Beatles songs? Who knows, but it is certainly not as popular as their most infamous tracks.
“You Won’t See Me”
Source: Peter Burditt/americansongwriter.com
Rubber Soul is the album where The Beatles combined their teeny bopper ways with the cutting edge sound of 60s rock ‘n’ roll. One underrated track that perfectly displays that combination is the album’s third track, “You Won’t See Me”.
Like the rest of the songs on this list, “You Won’t See Me” was also not released as a single. So, again, it had no chart history or activity. Nonetheless, this is a Beatles track that deserves to re-enter circulation amongst their fans. Because, like many of their songs, it is right on the verge of being perfect.
Even if the rest of the world was none the wiser in early fall of 1969, The Beatles were well aware that their band was on the outs—a disintegration that would come that much more swiftly and divisively, thanks to a controversial John Lennon single he released in October of that year.
The subject matter of Lennon’s single was certainly sensitive. But it was nothing that The Beatles hadn’t covered already in songs like “Happiness is a Warm Gun”. Interestingly, Lennon’s actions following the release of his Plastic Ono Band track drummed up more drama than anything else.
Lennon’s response? “They’re so stupid about drugs.”
Whispers of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s worsening h***** addiction had already made their way into The Beatles discography by the late 1960s. “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” and “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey” from the band’s 1968 eponymous “White Album” both touched on Lennon’s substance abuse. But “Cold Turkey” did more than touch—it prodded, pushed, and screamed the entire experience out onto vinyl. It’s a brash, intense, from-the-bones kind of song and, unsurprisingly, not one The Beatles saw fit for the group.
In the midst of working on Abbey Road, Lennon wrote “Cold Turkey” and presented it to the rest of The Beatles. As Paul DuNoyer described in John Lennon: The Stories Behind Every Song 1970-1980, the song was “so harrowing and so personal that it could only be a Lennon solo project.” And so it was. Lennon released “Cold Turkey” in October 1969 under the Plastic Ono Band. The track was Lennon’s second solo single after “Give Peace a Chance”, which he released in July.
Even for The Beatles, a transparent association with h***** was a bit too intense. American radio stations began banning the track, a decision Lennon would later call “stupid” during one of his final interviews with David Sheff in 1980. “They were thinking I was promoting h*****,” Lennon said. “They’re so stupid about drugs. They’re not looking at the cause of the drug problem. Why is everybody taking drugs? To escape from what? I’m not preaching about ‘em. I’m just saying a drug is a drug. Why we take them is important, not who’s selling it to whom on the corner.”
Source: americansongwriter.com/Melanie Davis
