Beatles News
Fans were left in shock after Paul McCartney snuck into the Beatles '64 documentary premiere at Hudson Square Theater in New York City on Sunday. The musician, 82, looked relaxed as he settled into a random seat in the middle of the venue alongside his wife Nancy, 65, and behind comedian Chris Rock.
While the crowd around him remained calm, Paul was seen waving to a few fans before watching the new film which is produced by famed filmmaker Martin Scorsese, 82. It was announced that Paul was in attendance right before the screening started, but the majority of the crowd saw him as they were taking their seats. Overwhelmed by Paul's appearance, the fan wrote: 'trying to watch the new beatles documentary and HE SHOWS UP'.
She added in the caption: 'and if i said i cried during the first ten minutes…' Fans were left in shock after Paul McCartney snuck into the Beatles '64 documentary premiere in NYC on Sunday alongside his wife Nancy
Other fans couldn't believe he had snuck into the theatre as they took to the comments to share their surprise. They penned: 'Nah but imagine watching the beatles documentary and PAUL MCCARTNEY sits next to you'; 'omfg y’all are breathing the same air'; 'No matter how rich and famous a person can be. When Paul walks in the room everyone else looks smaller.';
'Paul McCartney is the one celebrity I would absolutely die if I saw in person'. Others joked: 'he probably whispered "i know them" to the person sitting next to him, pointing at john ringo n george'; 'there to fact check'.
Earlier in the night the star took to the red carpet with his wife as he donned a mixed-material jacket with grey tweed and light-wash denim details along the cuffs, collar and buttons down the center.
Source: dailymail.co.uk
Nothing else that might happen in their careers could be bigger than going to America. Or so The Beatles thought in 1964.
“They're all so free on this trip, and joyful,” says David Tedeschi, director of the new Disney+ documentary “Beatles ‘64” (streaming Friday), which follows the Fab Four and their most devoted fans through the chaotic days before and after the band’s Feb. 9 appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” “Even later on in 1964, it wasn't the thrill that it was in February.”
The footage, shot by Albert and David Maysles for a rarely seen 1964 TV documentary (“What’s Happening! The Beatles in the USA”), is supplemented with fresh interviews with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, interspersed with recollections from those early admirers. Martin Scorsese, a producer on the project, also gets a tour of Starr's well-preserved Beatles wardrobe, including the drummer's hot pink “Sgt. Pepper” uniform and green pinstriped “Hey Jude” jacket.
Most thrilling for the audience will be the restoration of the original 16 mm film, with the live performances demixed by “Get Back” director Peter Jackson’s WingNut Films and remixed by Beatles producer Giles Martin. The band’s famous concert at Washington Coliseum − their first in America − finally can be heard over the screaming, weeping and rhapsodic crowd.
Source: usatoday.com
Ringo Starr appears to have confirmed the rumors that Saltburn star Barry Keoghan is going to play him in Sam Mendes’ upcoming Beatles movies.
Back in February, Mendes announced plans to make four separate Beatles movies, one for each member — Ringo, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison — and almost immediately speculation began as to who’ll play the Fab Four, with Keoghan’s name mentioned for Ringo.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, the 84-year-old Ringo appeared to let it slip that the rumor is true.
When asked how he feels about Keoghan playing him, Ringo shared, “Well, I think it’s great. I believe he’s somewhere taking drum lessons, and I hope not too many.”
So far there’s been no official announcement about the casting.
Mendes’ films will be made by Sony Pictures, and will mark the first time Apple Corps Ltd. and The Beatles have granted a studio the rights to the life stories of band members and their legendary catalog of music. Each film will be told from the point of view of one of the band members.
Source: kslx.com
It’s often claimed, I’m not sure on what authority, that the Beatles’ arrival in America, three months after the assassination of President Kennedy, in some unquantifiable way lifted the spirits of a depressed nation, allowing it to move forward into the light. Perhaps reliving it in 2024 will bring similar relief, though of course, some will just long for the past.
It’s a thought repeated by Paul McCartney himself in a delightful new-old documentary “Beatles ’64,” premiering Friday on Disney+, in what, after “The Beatles Anthology” in 1995 and “Get Back” in 2019, might be seen as an infrequent Thanksgiving tradition. The film, produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by David Tedeschi, is the latest repurposing of footage shot by Albert and David Maysles, when the band crossed the pond to appear on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in February 1964.
The Maysles’ footage was originally used for the BBC documentary “What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A.,” and formed the substance of the 1991 “The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit.” (Bits and pieces have appeared in various Beatles docs over the years; it is foundational stuff.) But there is more of it here, interspersed with new interviews with McCartney, Ringo Starr and fans and friends who participated in the moment, along with archival interviews with George Harrison and John Lennon and some needless social context from Marshall McLuhan and Betty Friedan. Happily absent are later-generation pop stars testifying to the band’s genius, or worse, singing their own versions of Beatles songs. Not even the Beatles testify to their own genius.
“You must be kidding with that question,” says McCartney, when a reporter asks about their place in “Western culture.” “It’s not culture, it’s a good laugh.”
Source: Robert Lloyd/latimes.com
While I tend to prefer The Beatles's more experimental sound in albums such as Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, or Magical Mystery Tour, I can't deny that I have jammed countless times to Hey Jude. But if you were to tell me that a song deemed one of the worst of its decade that talked about cake and rain was behind the release of "Hey Jude", then maybe I should reconsider my musical preferences.
Well, that song is "MacArthur Park", ranked as the third worst song of the '60s by Rolling Stone in 2011. Now, what does a folk song sung by Richard Harris have to do with the "Na-na-na-na's" of The Beatles single? Not the lyrics, not the chords, not the structure, but the length of the song itself.
"At first, we felt like the guys who'd created the A-bomb: we were a bit afraid of what we'd done," Jimmy Webb said in an interview with The Guardian. He was the one who wrote "MacArthur Park." "I didn't know I could write something like that," he continued. To be honest, I didn't know someone could write anything like that, actually.
The infamous song has a length of seven minutes and 21 seconds. Webb was surprised that radio stations began playing it in its entirety. "I was asked to do a shorter version as a single," he said. "I refused, so eventually they put out the full seven minutes 20 seconds. George Martin once told me The Beatles let 'Hey Jude' run to over seven minutes because of 'MacArthur Park."
If you are like me who suffers from an extreme case of the Mandela Effect, you would be surprised to learn that the Beatles single's length is seven minutes and 12 seconds. That's a lot of "Na-na-na-nas," and if Webb is right, then we owe him for every single one of them.
Source: Alejandro Josan/wideopencountry.com
By the mid to late-’60s, Paul McCartney became immersed in the underground scene in London, sparked by the British pop art movement, works coming from the Drury Lane Arts Lab—where John Lennon and Yoko Ono would premiere their joint work Four Thoughts (Build-Around) in 1968—Andy Warhol and David Morrissey’s Chelsea Girls, and other emerging collectives.
After connecting with the design group BEV (Binder, Edwards & Vaughan), McCartney was commissioned to produce a piece for their upcoming exhibition The Million Volt Light and Sound Rave in 1967 and jumped at the opportunity to showcase the Beatles‘ more avant-garde side.
Recorded on the morning of January 5, 1967, the near-14-minute piece, “Carnival of Light,” was a free-for-all, orchestrated by McCartney of loosely riffed guitars, distorted instrumentation, dense echos, and random phrases blurted: “Barcelona” and “Are you all right?”
“I said ‘All I want you to do is just wander around all the stuff, bang it, shout, play it, it doesn’t need to make any sense,’” recalled McCartney of his instructions to the band for the recording. “’Hit a drum, then wander on to the piano, hit a few notes. Just wander around.’ So that’s what we did and then put a bit of an echo on it. It’s very free.”
After creating a mess of noise for nearly 14 minutes, McCartney pulled the plug on “Carnival of Light” after 13 minutes and 48 seconds. “This is ridiculous,” said producer George Martin. “We’ve got to get our teeth into something a little more productive.” After wrapping up their experimental piece, the band recorded “Penny Lane,” which was initially intended for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Source: Tina Benitez-Eves/americansongwriter.com
Regrets that stem from inaction can be some of the most painful to reconcile, and that seemed to be the case for the one thing John Lennon always regretted about his time with the Beatles. Although he would admit in the same breath, he didn’t regret it enough to act on it.
So it often goes in life, after all. Hindsight is always 20/20, and when it comes to matters of creativity and ego, that type of clarity can reveal far more than we’re often comfortable seeing face-to-face.
John Lennon Regretted This About The Beatles
David Sheff’s All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono is as revealing as a conversation with that kind of pomp would suggest. In the massive interview spanning three weeks in August 1980, four months before Lennon’s death, the ex-Beatle talked about his life with his second wife, individual Beatles songs, and memories (and regrets) of his time in the Fab Four.
The last included one notable tinge of remorse Lennon always felt about George Harrison and Ringo Starr’s place in the Beatles’ songwriting compensation. As Lennon was discussing hurtful comments Harrison had made about him in his memoir, the “Imagine” singer said it was particularly painful because he had tried to ensure Harrison and Starr would get decent compensation from Beatles songs.
“It was because of me that Ringo and George got a piece of John and Paul’s songwriting,” Lennon argued to Sheff. “Under [manager] Allen Klein’s auspices, John and Paul own completely anything that [publishing company] Maclen published. I always felt bad that George and Ringo didn’t get a piece of the publishing. Not bad enough to do anything about it, but slightly guilty about it.”
Source: Melanie Davis/americansongwriter.com
As someone who has been a major part of the music industry since the 1960s, Paul McCartney has undoubtedly run into countless troubled musicians around the world, but one singer he never helped has always nagged him in hindsight. Of course, such is the way of regret. There would be no need for it if we had the ability to go back in time and change our actions.
But because that’s impossible and time keeps marching on, McCartney has held on to his remorse, especially after the troubled singer he wished he could have saved died in the summer of 2011.
From the initial waves of Beatlemania to the tragic killing of his bandmate, John Lennon, and everything before, after, and in between, Paul McCartney has certainly witnessed a lot in his lifetime. McCartney has been around to see every member of the infamous 27 Club die, but one of its unlucky members always stuck with him a bit more than the rest.
McCartney recalled meeting Amy Winehouse for the first time in passing in 2008. Winehouse was at the height of her fame and corresponding scandals around her relationships, mental health, and substance abuse. The two British icons passed each other at the European MTV Awards in Liverpool.
Source: Melanie Davis/americansongwriter.com
With a Scorsese-produced doc on the Fab Four just around the corner, cue up 10 other essential works which shine a light on the most important band in the history of pop.
Having professed his love for the Rolling Stones with numerous documentaries and concert films, Martin Scorsese switches his attention to their one-time fiercest rivals as the producer of Beatles '64.
Out. Nov. 29, the Disney+ original centers on the year when the Beatles replicated their UK success on the other side of the Atlantic, with their iconic performance in front of 73 million "The Ed Sullivan Show" viewers the undisputed catalyst.
Of course, Beatles '64 is far from the first doc on the Fab Four to boast such an Oscar-winning pedigree. Both Peter Jackson and Ron Howard have essentially bowed down and declared “We're not worthy” with screen displays of fandom in recent years. In fact, since the group dramatically went their separate ways in 1970, countless documentarians — some who lived through it, others who had to learn it — have tried to place the success of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Star in a wider context while finding new and interesting ways to tell their remarkable story.
So which are the documentary equivalents of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road (or whichever entry in the Liverpudlian' unrivaled back catalog is your ultimate)? From behind-the-scenes snapshots and musical deep dives, to intimate character portraits and star-studded retrospectives, here's a look at 10 documentaries any Beatles obsessive should have on their must-watch list.
'Let It Be' (1970)
Eschewing the usual pop documentary conventions, the Oscar and GRAMMY-winnning Let It Be simply points the camera at the Beatles during the recording of their same-named final studio effort and lets the action naturally unfold. There are occasional glimpses of the tensions you'd expect from a band about to distintegrate; a fraught discussion about the guitar line on "Two of Us," for example, in which Harrison has to reassure McCartney that he's not being annoying (the guitarist's brief mid-sessions departure, however, is entirely omitted), and the moment which director Michael Lindsay-Hogg pithily described as Lennon dying of boredom.
Source: grammy.com
Love them, they did.
When The Beatles launched their US invasion in 1964 — complete with their historic debut appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” — the mop-topped Brits were under siege by the screaming masses upon their arrival in New York.
“It was like being in the eye of a hurricane,” says John Lennon in “Beatles ’64,” the Martin Scorsese-produced documentary that premieres on Disney+ Nov. 29.
But as the Fab Four were taking refuge from the hysteria at Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel, the Ronettes came to their rescue.
“We were already friends with them from England. George [Harrison] was dating Estelle, my sister, so it was very simple,” says head Ronnie Spector — front woman of the “Be My Baby” girl group — in the doc.
“John called me at my house, and he said, ‘Ronnie, we’re prisoners. We can’t get out. The whole place is surrounded by girls around the whole Plaza building.’ ”
But Spector, along with the other two Ronettes, came to the hotel and orchestrated The Beatles’ great escape uptown to the home of the Apollo.
Source: Chuck Arnold/nypost.com
