Beatles News
These days Brenda Lee is best known for the perennial 1958 holiday classic "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," which she recorded when she was 12 years old. But during the '60s, she was the hottest female pop star on the planet — the Taylor Swift of her time.
She was such a huge star that she scored back-to-back No. 1 hits in 1960 with "I'm Sorry" and "I Want to Be Wanted" while she was still in her teens. Early in the decade, she even headlined a show where her opening act was The Beatles. Lee talks about her connection to her fellow rock and roll legends in the new PBS American Masters documentary Brenda Lee: Rockin' Around.
When I started touring in England, I was popular [there] before I ever was here," Lee, 80, says in the documentary. "There was this group that opened this show for me known as The Silver Beatles, who became The Beatles."
While hanging out with the Fab Four, she says, she forged an especially close connection to one of them in particular.
"John was my favorite Beatle," Lee recalls. "I loved them all, but John was, to say the least, irreverent, had a great sense of humor. He was magical. He was a genie in the bottle, and he let me have the cork. John Lennon said I was the first female rocker."
Source: Jeremy Helligar/people.com
Towards the end of Come on to Me – a song about sexual chemistry from the near-end of the Paul McCartney solo catalogue – the 82-year-young musician whips off his blue jacket, displaying its elegant patterned lining. The reaction is wildly appreciative, if not quite the one that once met this former teenybopper idol at the screaming height of Beatlemania. “That is the biggest wardrobe change of the evening,” he quips. (Swapping his Höfner bass for an electric guitar several times doesn’t count.)
Welcome, then, to the eras tour – no, not that one, another one; one where costume changes are in inverse proportion to the number of lifetimes and cultural disruptions it spans. The McCartney timeline goes deep; inextricable from world events. The mood tonight is one of witnessing history, with clots of multigenerational fans luxuriating in the songs that moved tectonic plates and carved glaciers, shaping everything that came after.
The Quarrymen – the Beatles-to-be – recorded In Spite of All the Danger in 1958 when Elvis Presley was in the army, the peace symbol was adopted by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and BOAC began ferrying air travellers across the Atlantic. The ingredients of the Beatles’ catalogue were all there: confidence in their material, vulnerable romance, not to mention George Harrison’s contribution.
Tonight, on the 2024 leg of McCartney’s Got Back world tour (it began in 2022, with a memorable pit stop at the Glastonbury festival), it feels like a time capsule opened in an unimaginably different future, where the pace of change, fast then, now approaches greased quantum velocity.
Source: Kitty Empire/theguardian.com
The Beatles producer George Martin was responsible for molding the band’s sound into what it was, with lush orchestral arrangements and more highbrow compositions. When Martin initially heard the Beatles, he wasn’t that impressed. But, as he said once in 1964, “I just thought they were interesting and thought they had something slightly different, and I liked to know something more about them.”
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Martin’s partnership with the Beatles spanned 13 albums, and he brought his classical knowledge to the group’s diamond-in-the-rough beginnings. The partnership led to some of the Beatles’ most notable works, and Martin always kept things transparent and realistic. When he didn’t like something, he made it known.
There was one song that George Harrison wrote for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band that Martin despised, and he removed it from the record. However, the backstory of the track “Only A Northern Song” is more complicated than George Martin’s whims.
Source: Lauren Boisvert/americansongwriter.com
With the growing excitement over Sam Mendes’ upcoming quartet of Beatles biopics (which we now know will feature Gladiator II's Paul Mescal), as well as the new documentary film Beatles ’64 wowing critics, interest in the Beatles’ film output is once again skyrocketing. It’s easy to forget the Fab Four released no less than five movies during their time together, including A Hard Day’s Night (1964), Help! (1965), and the concert film The Beatles at Shea Stadium (1966). Those first three were acclaimed to varying degrees, but the winning streak was well and truly broken by 1967's Magical Mystery Tour.
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By the middle of 1967, the Beatles were at the height of their creative powers. The previous year had seen the release of their critically acclaimed album Revolver, which was followed by the seminal Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Nevertheless, several members were beginning to look away from the band to other pursuits. John Lennon was spending increasing amounts of time investigating avant-garde art alongside an as-yet unknown artist, Yoko Ono, while George Harrison was immersing himself in Indian culture and spirituality. McCartney, meanwhile, was beginning a decades-long interest in orchestral work, having collaborated with Beatles producer George Martin to record an award-winning soundtrack to the kitchen-sink drama The Family Way earlier in the year, prefiguring his later career.
Source: Craig Jones/collider.com
On June 16, 1966, the Beatles performed “Paperback Writer” and “Rain” on Top of the Pops. Like many artists before, and after them, who appeared on the BBC show, the Beatles lip-synced through the two songs. The episode was lost by the BBC, and only 11 seconds were recovered in 2019, but it did indicate how the band felt about playing the latter song live.
The Beatles continued performing “Paperback Writer,” and it was part of their 1966 tour setlist, it wasn’t the easiest for the four to pull off. The layered vocals were difficult to reproduce live and only frustrated the band.
Written by Paul McCartney and recorded on April 13 and 14 at Abbey Road during their Revolver sessions, and released as a single with “Rain,” “Paperback Writer” was an innovative track in its use of echo. “‘Paperback Writer’ was the first time that we have had an echo on a Beatles track,” said producer George Martin.
Source: Tina Benitez-Eves/americansongwriter.com
Beatles drummer Ringo Starr was a surprise guest at the final gig of former band-mate Paul McCartney's London tour, with the pair reuniting to play some of the Fab Four's greatest hits.
"I've had a great night tonight, it's been a great show," the 84-year-old drummer said late Thursday as he took the stage at London's O2 Arena on the final evening of McCartney's "Got Back" tour.
They then ran through timeless hits including "Helter Skelter" and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
"I'm off now, I've had a great night and I love you all," Starr told the packed crowd as he left the stage.
Starr and McCartney have reunited several times since the Beatles break-up, including on McCartney's 2018-19 "Freshen Up" tour.
Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood also joined McCartney for the song "Get Back", with the former Beatle playing his original Hofner bass for the first time in 50 years.
Source: swiowanewssource.com
Only recently given stewardship over his late father’s work, Sean Ono Lennon is on a remarkable run.
The only child of John Lennon and Yoko Ono won an Academy Award this year for a short film based on his parents’ 1971 song “Happy Christmas (War is Over”)” and, a few months later, was nominated for his first-ever Grammy, for producing a box set on the album “Mind Games,” originally released in 1973.
“It feels overwhelming and surreal,” said Lennon, who also recently shared a Webby Award with his mother for Ono’s interactive art project “Wish Tree.”
For Lennon, who was 5 when the former Beatle was murdered in 1980, the work is a way to connect with his father. It’s more than a preservation mission: On “Mind Games,” he takes artistic license, pulling apart the recordings of John Lennon’s music to create something entirely new.
Lennon was inspired, in part, by another Beatle offspring, Dhani Harrison, who helped repackage his own father’s “All Things Must Pass.” Dhani Harrison is also behind this fall’s reissue of his dad’s “Living in the Material World,” but that experience is nothing like what Lennon did with “Mind Games.”
Besides the music, the innovative box is modeled after one of his mother’s art pieces and filled with art reproductions, hidden music, video, messages and puzzles, some only visible through an ultraviolet light that is included — “mind games,” remember? The deluxe box retails for $1,350, but there are less expensive options.
Source: DAVID BAUDER/apnews.com
Julian Lennon has revealed that he's awaiting test results from a biopsy, almost five years after he went public with a "cancer scare."
The musician and photographer, who is the eldest son of late Beatles legend John Lennon, revealed in a Facebook post back in February 2020 that a mole he'd had on his head his entire life was removed after a biopsy revealed it had turned cancerous.
During an appearance on podcast The Joe Rogan Experience this week, Lennon, 61, revealed that his past experience prompted him to recently seek medical advice regarding a complaint with the skin on one of his arms.
As the podcast started, host Joe Rogan asked Lennon about his arm, prompting him to explain that he went to see a dermatologist. Pointing to his arm, he said: "[I have] a little excision here, because it had been bothering me a bit."
Lennon added that the dermatologist "just did a little cutting, and no doubt, I'll hear from her in a few days, once she gets the results."
Newsweek has contacted representatives of Lennon via email for comment.
Source: Ryan Smith/newsweek.com
Maestro Zakir Hussain passed away on December 15 at the age of 73. He was admitted to San Francisco hospital, where he stayed in the ICU for two weeks. His condition worsened and he succumbed to complications arising from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic lung condition.
During an interview with The National, Zakir Hussain had once opened up about an interaction with The Beatles’ George Harrison. While having a conversation about sitar, Harrison noted why he did not choose to play the sitar in one of his songs.“I remember I asked George, ‘Why aren’t you playing sitar on this album?’ and I took it a step further and said, ‘Why don’t you play the sitar on stage?'" Hussain asked. Harrison responded, “I don’t want to insult my teachers by playing the sitar badly on stage. It is not my instrument, and I haven’t grown up with it. But I can take that music, and I can transpose it on my guitar, which I have more control over, and offer my reverence and respect to the art form."
Source: MSN
The more we know about an artist’s personal life, the more it can narrow our views of their songwriting. Too often, we assume the meaning of a particular track, without giving the credit for the imagination of the writer to create something outside their immediate personal experience.
That’s what happened, according to Paul McCartney, with The Beatles’ song “I Will,” which was released on The White Album in 1968. Although it’s a love song and McCartney was still in a relationship with actress Jane Asher at the time, he insisted afterward that he had no one in particular in mind when writing it.
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“I Will” represents the oft-unorthodox manner of approaching songs that was emblematic of The White Album. Instead of The Beatles taking their specific instruments, they switched things up. McCartney plays acoustic guitar and sings, while vocalizing the bass part. Ringo Starr played bongos and maracas, while John Lennon added extra percussion on wood blocks. George Harrison wasn’t at the session that produced the song.
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
