Beatles News
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
When it was over, George Harrison rarely got too sentimental about his time with The Beatles. But he also didn’t shy away from commenting on it in his songs, even if he did so ever so subtly at times.
“The Light That Has Lighted The World” stands out as one of the most moving songs from Harrison’s 1973 album Living In The Material World. It reflects his feelings on how people viewed the changes that he underwent upon entering the world of fortune and fame.
Heading for the “Light”
Because All Things Must Pass was such a powerhouse of an album, the LPs that followed it in the George Harrison catalog sometimes didn’t get the respect they deserved. This is especially true about Living In The Material World. It’s a far more muted record than its predecessor. But it’s no less compelling.
Harrison included “The Light That Has Lighted The World” on that album. He had originally written it as part of a series of songs that he intended for Cilla Black. Black was a recording star in Great Britain who came from the same environs as The Beatles, which led to a long association between the acts.
Since he had earmarked the song “When The Song Is Sung” as a single for Black, he figured he’d write her a B-side as well. To do that, he imagined a topic that might be relevant to Black. And he considered the fact that she, like Harrison, had gone from humble beginnings to the height of fame. That transformation served as the focus for “The Light That Has Lighted The World”.
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
A new documentary produced by Martin Scorsese will celebrate Beatlemania's diamond jubilee. Beatles '64, which will debut on Disney+ on Nov. 29, will feature new interviews with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and the Beatlemaniacs who followed them, paired with footage of the band's first U.S. concert and Ed Sullivan Show appearance. All of the archival footage has been restored in 4K, and the audio for the live footage was demixed by WingNut Films and remixed by Giles Martin, who was the music supervisor for Peter Jackson's Get Back docuseries.
Filmmaker David Tedeschi, who co-directed a doc on the New York Dolls' David Johansen and was nominated for Emmys recognizing docs he worked on about George Harrison and Bob Dylan, directed the picture. It includes footage by documentarians Albert and David Maysles and traces the group's heroes' welcome at New York's JFK airport on Feb. 7, 1964, and the crowds that followed them. On Feb. 9, they performed three songs on The Ed Sullivan Show to a television audience of 73 million viewers. Two days later, they performed their first-ever concert in the United States at Washington, D.C.'s Washington Coliseum. The filmmakers promise to include behind-the-scenes footage of how the quartet handled instant fame.
In addition to Scorsese, the list of the film's producers includes McCartney (who released a photo book of the Beatles in 1963 and 1964 last year), Starr, Olivia Harrison, and Sean Ono Lenon, among others.
In a 1979 Rolling Stone interview, George Harrison expressed ambivalence about Beatlemania. "We were just four relatively sane people in the middle of madness," he reflected. "People used us as an excuse to trip out, and we were the victims of that. … A lot of the time it was fantastic, but when it really got into the mania it was a question of either stop or end up dead. We almost got killed in a number of situations - planes catching on fire, people trying to shoot the plane down and riots everywhere we went. It was aging me. But we had a great time."
Source: MSN
On the morning of July 18 when Indio resident Linda Harger logged on to buy tickets for Paul McCartney's Sept. 29 concert at Acrisure Arena, the number of people ahead of her in the queue was crushing.
"I have to be in that building," the superfan recalled thinking. "He's coming to town and there's no way I'm going to miss it."
All the seats she wanted were gone when Harger got to the front of the digital line, so she purchased resale tickets. Skipping the concert was not an option. The event is a meaningful next step in a lifelong relationship with the music of The Beatles — and especially McCartney.
So when did that relationship begin? The 73-year-old got teary when she described watching the Fab Four make their U.S. debut on "The Ed Sullivan Show" on Feb. 9, 1964.
"I just watched them and life changed," Harger said. "They were just so amazing. So amazing. You know, there's a lot of articles that I see now that said ... one of the things that made The Beatles so popular at that time was it came so close after the (President John F.) Kennedy assassination. And so I think it changed a lot of the attitude. It was something to be happy about. Something that was pleasant and fun."
Harger recalled that during the band's TV debut, a caption flashed on the screen under John Lennon that said, "Sorry, girls, he's married." That was OK, because out of the four Beatles, she had a particular favorite: McCartney.
"It was all over, Ricky Nelson was out the window," Harger said. "(McCartney) is so handsome, and when you're a 12-year-old girl, that's basically it. He's also a very talented musician, great family man, aware of what's going on in the world, and he's kind and generous. John always had an edge to him, Paul didn't have an edge and seemed like a nice guy."
Building a community of fellow fans
From that moment on, Harger immersed herself in Beatles culture. She clipped every Beatles article she could find in her hometown newspaper — the Butler Eagle in Butler, Pennsylvania — and filled scrapbooks with them. She also began writing letters to other fans through teen magazines. A lot of them. By the mid-1960s, she had 50 Beatles pen pals with whom she swapped stories, opinions and sometimes even memorabilia.
"They were like letters to the editor. Back then, they would print your whole name and address. There was an article someone wrote that said, 'The Monkees are better than The Beatles.' That drove me nuts and I wrote in saying 'No! That's not true!' I got a lot of pen pals that way. Another pen pal would say, 'You should write to this person.' They had these things called slam books, and you'd mail them around, and people would write their names in them. If you liked what they said, you'd write them a letter," Harger said.
Source: yahoo.com/Brian Blueskye, Palm Springs Desert Sun
John Lennon and Yoko Ono temporarily separated in 1973. She told him that she had begun to feel suffocated by their constant togetherness, and asked him to move out. At first, Lennon appeared thrilled. He was single for the first time in his adult life.
John Lennon didn’t seem concerned when Yoko Ono asked him to move out
Amid growing tension in their marriage, Ono told Lennon that she wanted a break. She suggested that he move to Los Angeles to give them some much-needed space. Ono asked the couple’s friend, Elliot Mintz, to keep an eye on her estranged husband. At first, however, Lennon seemed perfectly fine to Mintz.
“For the first few months, John appeared entirely content in Los Angeles — one might even say gleeful,” Mintz wrote in his book We All Shine On: John, Yoko, and Me. “He seemed to consider his expulsion from the Dakota and banishment to the West Coast as something of a bachelor’s holiday.”
Mintz believed that Lennon was excited to experience what it was like to be single for the first time in his adult life.
“Remember, he was twenty-one when he married Cynthia; he was twenty-eight when he married Yoko. Now, at the cusp of thirty-three, for the first time in his adult life, he didn’t have a wife (or, for that matter, three other partners) who made up his extended family. He was a free man.”
Source: MSN
Actor Richard E Grant has praised Barry Keoghan, his Saltburn co-star, saying he will be a “fantastic Ringo Starr” in the new Beatles biopics.
Sony Pictures has announced a collection of four films about the band members, with Keoghan cast as drummer Sir Ringo Starr.
Speaking on The One Show, Grant praised the 32-year-old Irish actor who he worked with in the 2023 Emerald Fennell thriller.
Grant said: “He’s an extraordinary actor. He’s unlike anybody else I’ve ever, ever worked with before, so completely untrained, instinctive and brilliant.
Directed by Sir Sam Mendes, each of the movies will showcase one of the members of the Fab Four: John Lennon, Sir Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Sir Ringo.
Keoghan is best known for his roles in The Killing Of A Sacred Deer and The Banshees Of Inisherin, the latter winning his the Bafta for best supporting actor in 2023.
A scene from Saltburn showing his character – an Oxford University student who gets wrapped up in the charming and aristocratic world of his classmate – dancing naked around a country manor to Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder On The Dancefloor went viral.
The cast for the Beatles films also includes Normal People’s Paul Mescal, who will play Sir Paul, while Lennon will be portrayed by Babygirl actor Harris Dickinson.
Source: MSN
The Beatles decided to stop touring in 1966, tired after years on the road, playing to huge crowds of screaming fans. Their final tour, which was across the United States and Canada that summer, was marred by controversy around John Lennon's comment that the band was "more popular than Jesus".
John had made the comment in an interview with the Evening Standard in July 1966 and it didn't even cause a stir in the UK. However, when it was reproduced by US magazine Datebook later that month, there was outrage directed toward The Beatles from American Christians.
The band had grown tired of the media attention, heavy security and the demands that Beatlemania brought with it. They knew that the tour's final night - at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, would be their final gig.
About the decision to stop playing live, George Harrison later said: "We'd been through every race riot, and every city we went to there was some kind of a jam going on, and police control, and people threatening to do this and that... and (us) being confined to a little room or a plane or a car.
"We all had each other to dilute the stress, and the sense of humour was very important... But there was a point where enough was enough.” Retiring from playing live allowed the band to focus their effort on recording, trying exciting and inventive things in the studio.
The following years saw them reinvent popular music with 'Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band' before 'The White Album' was recorded during tetchy and difficult sessions, marked by John bringing Yoko Ono into the studio and serious creative differences within the band emerging.
The difficulties during 'The White Album' saw Ringo Starr leave the band for two weeks, so Paul McCartney wanted to soothe relations and take things back to basics with their next project. ‘Get Back’ was meant to mark a return to performing live for The Beatles as they embraced their early rock and roll style.
The Beatles convened at Twickenham Film Studios in London in early January where they would prepare and record a new album. The idea was that their rehearsals would be filmed for a TV special to accompany their return to the stage. However, it did not go to plan.
In 'The Beatles Diary', Barry Miles wrote: "It was a disaster. They were still exhausted from the marathon The Beatles (White Album) sessions.
"Paul bossed George around; George was moody and resentful. John would not even go to the bathroom without Yoko at his side... The tension was palpable, and it was all being caught on film."
Source: liverpoolecho.co.uk/Dan Haygarth
“About three in the morning, there's a knock on the door. And John was there and he had Paul with him." David Bowie on how he almost got former Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney back together in 1974.
While Beatles fans dreamed of the group reuniting in the 1970s, David Bowie once revealed that he nearly managed to get John Lennon and Paul McCartney back together in 1974 to form a supergroup with him.
It was the year Bowie moved to New York City, just three years after Lennon himself had emigrated there. Shortly after Bowie’s arrival, he met Lennon at a party hosted by Elizabeth Taylor. Of all the Beatles, Lennon was his favorite.
“He was one of the major influences on my musical life,” Bowie said in an interview recorded in the 1980s. “I mean, I just thought he was the very best of what could be done with rock and roll, and also ideas.
Although he was nervous when the two met privately, they quickly formed a bond that led to Lennon visiting Bowie one night, with McCartney in tow.
As Bowie explained to BBC 6 Music with Marc Riley, he was lodging at the time at the Pierre Hotel. “I’d taken over a suite virtually for months and months,” he said. “I was kind of living there.”
Bowie explained that he was obsessed with the newly released Sony video recorder and would spend hours making his own films. “Fortunately, I was doing cocaine so I could stay up most of the night and complete these things,” he said, tongue in cheek.
All the latest guitar news, interviews, lessons, reviews, deals and more, direct to your inbox! It was on one of these late-night creative sprees that he was surprised by a pair of visitors.
Source: guitarplayer.com/Elizabeth Swann
For all of their promise, the Beatles' journey as solo acts was dotted with potholes.
George Harrison came roaring into the '70s, quickly releasing two chart-topping post-breakup albums and three Top singles – topped by the No. 1 smash "My Sweet Lord." Ringo Starr struck platinum with 1973's Ringo and reeled off four straight Top 10 songs, including a pair of No. 1 hits.
Meanwhile, former bandmate Paul McCartney was already experiencing the kind of ups (1971's Ram) and downs (Wild Life, also from 1971) that would define his career away from the Beatles. Similarly, John Lennon followed up his biggest-selling solo LP (1971's Imagine) with one of his most poorly received albums.
McCartney would ultimately outsell them all, while Starr suffered the most dramatic solo career setbacks. Lennon's and then Harrison's careers were cut short when they died too early.
At one point, Starr was actually without a label after being dropped by RCA following a string of duds in the late '70s. But he ended up becoming the most productive of all of his former bandmates, regularly issuing albums and EPs after the turn of the century.
When they were together, the Beatles seemed to metronomically release one creative triumph after another. The same couldn't always be said of their solo records, even the hits. As you'll see in the following list of 25 Worst Beatles Solo Albums, each of them stumbled (sometimes badly) without the friction and spark that defined their former group's successes.
Source: Nick DeRiso/ultimateclassicrock.com
Paul McCartney says he remembers the exact moment The Beatles had “changed the world.”
In his Q&A session, You Gave Me the Answer, the Wings frontman would confirm he can still remember the feeling in the air when the Fab Four became the biggest band on the planet. McCartney shared the “first big success” of The Beatles and what it meant for its members. While he would note a specific stop-off on a tour of the United States, suggesting there was a change in the air, it was not until the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band that The Beatles could consider themselves a “worldwide” movement. McCartney claimed it was this album with the band that made him think he, along with John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, were truly changing the world.
He said: “I suppose it was our first big success in America. I started to realise that the attention was not just local, and it was around the time of Sgt Pepper when we started seeing our clothes and the music we were making getting copied on an international level.
“Although this had happened before at home, with people getting the Beatle haircut and all dressing in a similar fashion, it was around about Sgt Pepper that you could feel the worldwide movement.
“You could feel that people in California were thinking about what you were thinking about. And that’s when people started saying to us, ‘Wow man, you know your music changed my life!’ So, I think around about that time I started to think it was changing the world.”
To show just how in-tune with the world around him McCartney was, the Let It Be hitmaker claims to have written one of the songs featured on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band for legendary crooner Frank Sinatra.
Source: Ewan Gleadow/cultfollowing.co.uk
