Beatles News
I was pleasantly surprised to see John Lennon in Lincroft on Sunday.
The Beatle's portrait adorns a mural on the side of the Exxon Mobil garage at the intersection of Newman Springs Road and Swimming River Road. The words "Imagine Peace" frame Lennon and the art features the guitar and dove icon from the historic Woodstock posters.
Don't get me wrong -- I love the message of peace as much as I love John Lennon. (And I spent countless hours in middle and high school biking down Swimming River Road while listening to Beatles CDs.) The location of the mural and the choice of subject left me scratching my head, though.
READ MORE: History of the Evil Clown of Middletown
What do John Lennon and gas stations and New Jersey have in common?
Why Is There a John Lennon Mural at the Lincroft Exxon?
I'm pretty late to the party when it comes to the John Lennon mural. I grew up in Middletown but moved to the Hudson Valley 10 years ago, so I tend to only come back home for holidays and family events. In the midst of that, I managed to never see cross paths with the mural, which has been on the site for over four years.
When I broached the topic on Threads, I got a big response and information about the mural's origin. (Nice job, algorithm.)
Source: Jackie Corley/943thepoint.com
While Paul McCartney has a busy schedule, he said he still has some time to watch his favorite TV shows. McCartney watches television while he works out and to rid himself of any pre-show jitters. He said that one show in particular ranks highly on his list of guilty pleasures.
Paul McCartney said one of his guilty pleasures is a game show. McCartney said that he typically watches television while he works out in the morning. His taste is wide-ranging.
“Well, I like David Attenborough’s shows, and in-depth historical documentary stuff,” he said in a Q&a on his website. “But I also like Strictly.”
“I have lots of guilty pleasures,” he said. “Maybe TV shows more than music. I love Bargain Hunt.”
Bargain Hunt is a British show in which contestants...
Source: Emma McKee/Showbiz Cheat Sheet
Many classic rock stars contributed to the canon of Christmas music. On the other hand, George Harrison decided to give us a New Year's song.
Many classic rock stars contributed to the canon of Christmas music. On the other hand, George Harrison decided to give us a New Year’s song. His decision to buck a trend worked out artistically. However, the tune isn’t as popular now as it could be for an undeniable reason.
Why George Harrison’s New Year’s song is great and underrated
Christmas music is such a big deal that The Beatles got in on it. They released an original song called “Christmas Time (Is Here Again).”After the band broke up, John Lennon put out “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” Paul McCartney put out “Wonderful Christmastime,” and Ringo Starr released the album I Wanna Be Santa Claus. George never released a solo Christmas song, instead giving us the New Year’s anthem “Ding Dong, Ding Dong.”
While the track celebrates the New Year rather than Christmas, it takes some cues from Christmas music. Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound became a popular Christmas music trope since the producer put out his masterpiece A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector. “Ding Dong, Ding Dong” has its own Wall of Sound. It also uses some bells in its production.
However, it still embodies the spirit of New Year’s. For some, the holiday is about cleansing oneself from negative habits and trying to get off on the right foot. “Ding Dong, Ding Dong” is all about trying to become a better version of yourself. It’s downright inspiring and it makes “Wonderful Christmastime” look embarrassing by comparison (although that song never seemed too good in the first place).
However, “Wonderful Christmastime” will always be more popular than “Ding Dong, Ding Dong” because our culture values Christmas more than New Year’s.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
The Beatles’ catalog is packed to the brim with songs that have stood the test of time and are still beloved to this day. Many of their most popular tracks became hits when they were new, especially in the United Kingdom, the band’s home base. A few of their famous compositions never reached the weekly rankings, for one reason or another, but that doesn’t make them unsuccessful.
One of The Beatles’ most familiar and most-covered songs somehow escaped the U.K. charts for decades. That losing streak—if it can even be called that—is over, as the track debuts on one list across the pond.
“Blackbird” finally becomes a chart hit in the U.K., as of this week. The tune debuts at No. 96 on the Official Singles Downloads ranking, which tracks the bestselling legal downloads in the nation.
The Official Singles Downloads chart is the first list that “Blackbird” has appeared on in the U.K. That may be difficult to believe for many fans of the Fab Four—and the song itself—but it’s true. Despite its legacy and popularity, the title has never sold or streamed well enough in one tracking period to land on any list until now.
The Beatles released “Blackbird” in 1968. It was featured on their self-titled project, which is also known as The White Album, due to its largely blank cover. The song was never selected as a single, but it’s become a classic nonetheless.
The White Album never produced any singles, so “Blackbird” isn’t alone in its album cut status. The full-length also features fellow Beatles favorites like "Back in the U.S.S.R.," "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da," and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," among other fan favorites, and no one can call those tracks unsuccessful.
Source: Hugh McIntyre/forbes.com
Despite being an American-dominated genre, there has been a fair share of foreign musicians to toil in country music. Ringo Starr, The Rolling Stones, Tommy Emmanuel, and numerous others hail from other countries yet still play the American-founded genre. However, there is one more monstrous name and figure to add to that list, the one and only, John Lennon.
For a vast amount of reasons, this might come as an enormous surprise. But, at the end of the day, Lennon’s fleeting stint in country music proves that above all, he was a pure musician. When one listens to Lennon’s 1974 country single, they might believe there is nothing country about. Though, given its use of steel guitar, American roots lyrics, and the story behind it, it is, without a doubt, John Lennon’s most country-inspired solo song.
The song came as a result of a wild weekend John Lennon and Harry Nilsson spent together in Los Angeles in 1974. In the book All We Are Saying, John Lennon told author David Sheff, “[It was done] just to write a song.” “You know, ‘Seein’ as we’re stuck in this bottle of vodka together, we might as well try and do something,” Lennon added.
Nilsson is known for his Great American Songbook and singer/songwriter folk style. Hence, it is no surprise that Lennon and Nilsson mustered up something awfully American and somewhat country. Besides the presence of the steel guitar in the song, the most country aspect of the tune is its lyrics. According to Nilsson, Lennon’s goal was to create an entirely American song.
Nilsson attested to the fact stating, “When [Lennon] was writing ‘Old Dirt Road’… he said, ‘Harry, what’s a good Americanism,” per the BBC. In addition to the title, other lines encompassing Lennon’s “Americanism” include Trying to shovel smoke with a pitchfork in the wind and It’s better than a mudslide, mama, when the dry spell come.
Source: Peter Burditt/americansongwriter.com
Paul McCartney‘s long, storied recording career has included forays into just about every style of music you could possibly imagine. On the 1972 single “C Moon,” recorded with the earliest incarnation of his band Wings, he lovingly tackled reggae.
McCartney played it light in a lyrical sense with the song, even creating his own lingo with the title phrase. “C Moon” hit the Top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic, despite having to overcome obstacles caused by “Hi Hi Hi,” the track with which it was paired as a double A-sided single. In the Key of “C”
When Paul McCartney emerged to make music again following the breakup of The Beatles in 1970, he seemed determined to do so in a relaxed, off-the-cuff fashion, perhaps to temper the expectations of fans and critics. Both his first solo album (McCartney) and his first album with Wings (Wild Life) were somewhat ramshackle affairs, free of excessive fussing when it came to the writing and recording.
McCartney also seemed determined to broaden his horizons in the types of music he was going to make. While he had dabbled lightly in reggae with The Beatles (“Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” features hints of it), he went all-in on “C Moon.” It was a trip to Jamaica with wife Linda that helped light his fuse, as he explained in the book Wingspan: Paul McCartney’s Band on the Run:
“We both loved the music and going to Jamaica became our big ambition. When we did, we really fell in love with it: the country, the people, the music, the lifestyle, the weather. We spent weeks there, soaking up a lot of reggae—it was the start of rap but they used to call it toasting. There was a radio station called RJR that played reggae all day long, and a little shop in Montego Bay called Tony’s Record Store where we used to sift through all the 45s.”
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
Richard Starkey, born in Liverpool and known throughout the world as Ringo Starr, is the constant reminder that The Beatles loved each other, respected each other, and worked like dogs to make good music. “Every generation listens to the Beatles. It’s fantastic. The remastering, for me, was great because you can hear the drums, really hear what was played, not so boom, boom, boom… I still love the tracks. There was a lot of energy. We realized ‘we’re working here,’ you know, we’re not partying down while doing the tracks. We did that occasionally, and the track was always shit. But we went in and we did our best,” says Starr, 84, in the room of a luxury London hotel, where he has locked himself away to launch the promotion of his new album, Look Up, which will go on sale on January 10.
Starr’s latest record consists of 11 country songs written mostly by T. Bone Burnett, Bob Dylan’s guitarist during the 1970s, and a composer and producer with several Grammys under his belt. This is not the first album of the genre released by the former Beatles drummer: over 50 years ago he composed and produced the album Beaucoups of Blues.
And anyone who has heard the few Beatles songs Ringo sang, such as What Goes On, Act Naturally (“We’re going to make a film about a sad, lonely man. All I have to do is act naturally”), or even Octopus’s Garden, can sense a cowboy soul in the rhythm and in his voice.
Source: Rafa de Miguel/english.elpais.com
The Beatles’ Abbey Road is one of the bestselling albums that is still present on the Billboard charts. The classic has already sold more than 6.2 million copies in the U.S. alone since its release decades ago, but that doesn’t mean Americans are done with the set.
Abbey Road is on the rise on every ranking it appears on in the U.S. at the moment. The blockbuster climbs on five different tallies, thanks largely to a sizable uptick in purchases—one that is especially notable given not just how long the title has been available, but also how well it’s already sold.
In the past tracking period, Abbey Road was purchased by 7,750 Americans. That sum is up by more than 42% from last frame, according to Luminate. That’s a huge surge for a half-century-old release, regardless of the title or the band behind it.
Total consumption of the album also increased, but not by nearly as much. Including streams and sales of individual tunes featured on its tracklist, Abbey Road moved nearly 11,900 equivalent units last week. That’s a growth of almost 22% from the frame before, when it didn’t quite manage 10,000 units.
Source: Hugh McIntyre/forbes.com
Dark Horse and its subsequent tour arrived 50 years ago amid a period of conflict and uncertainty for George Harrison.
His first marriage and Apple Records were crumbling. Meanwhile, Harrison had been led away from his spiritual center by the pressures of starting his own label, also called Dark Horse, and mounting the first U.S. tour by any member of the Beatles since their final 1966 jaunt.
A bout of laryngitis and Harrison’s determination to expose American audiences to Ravi Shankar as a co-headliner only made matters worse for some critics. Harrison and a touring band featuring talents like late-period Beatles collaborator Billy Preston, ace sessions drummer Jim Keltner, Tom Scott and Robben Ford bore the brunt of their disappointment.
“George liked people who could play different styles of music,” Robben Ford tells us, in an exclusive Something Else! Sitdown. “He said I did a good job of working with them. I was surprised by that, because I felt out of my depth, honestly, in some ways. It was very intense.”
Released in December 1974, Dark Horse barely cracked the U.S. Top 5, and didn’t even chart in the U.K. – a huge let down after two chart-topping albums. The title track single only reached No. 15.
Source:Jimmy Nelson/somethingelsereviews.com
The Beatles released “Ticket to Ride” as the first single from their 1965 movie/album Help!, and the song continued their unstoppable run of success. It topped the charts in the U.S., the UK, and several other ports of call.
You might not realize, however, the song could easily have been called “Ticket to Ryde” had John Lennon and Paul McCartney revealed the initial inspiration that got the ball rolling. The song’s lyrics then deviated from that source to depict a tale of heartbreak and woe.
That’s the “Ticket”
For many years, it was assumed John Lennon wrote the bulk of “Ticket to Ride.” Lennon gave thorough interviews both right after The Beatles broke up in 1970 and right before his death in 1980, in which he dissected the provenance of many of the band’s songs. He claimed in both to have penned the song.
But it’s important to remember that Lennon was rifling through those questions rapid-fire, which didn’t leave him a lot of room for nuance. In later years, Paul McCartney stepped forward and suggested that while Lennon might have had the original idea for songs like “Ticket to Ride,” Macca was very much in the mix contributing words and music.
In his interviews, Lennon explained he had intended “Ticket to Ride” to be a bit heavier in a musical sense than what the band had been doing at that time. That heaviness seems to have been shorn away somewhat as the song was recorded, although you can hear remnants of it in Ringo Starr’s battering drum pattern.
Many urban legends popped up over the years concerning what The Beatles meant by saying that the girl in the song had a “Ticket to Ride.” McCartney set everyone straight when talking about the song in his book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present:
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
