Beatles News
Beatles engineer, Geoff Emerick, recounted the experience of watching the Beatles record “I Am the Walrus.” He explained the situation in great detail, keying fans into the aftermath of a not-so-great moment for the Fab Four: the death of their longtime manager, Brian Epstein.
“I Am the Walrus” certainly doesn’t seem like the best song to grieve to. Nevertheless, there was a job to do–no matter the extenuating circumstances.
“There was a pallor across the session that day – we were all distracted, thinking about Brian – but there was a song to be recorded, too,” Emerick once said. “Everyone seemed bewildered. The melody [to ‘I Am the Walrus’] consisted largely of just two notes, and the lyrics were pretty much just nonsense – for some reason John appeared to be singing about a walrus and an eggman. There was a moment of silence when he finished, then Lennon looked up at George Martin expectantly.”
Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come
Corporation tee-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday
Man, you been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long
Unsurprisingly, Martin had issues with this off-kilter track the first time he heard it.
“That one was called ‘I Am The Walrus,’ John said,” Emerick continued. “‘So…what do you think?’ George looked flummoxed; for once he was at a loss for words. ‘Well, John, to be honest, I have only one question: What the hell do you expect me to do with that?’”
Source:Alex Hopper/americansongwriter.com
He famously sang alongside his fellow Beatles in protest at the imposition of a ‘supertax’ under Harold Wilson’s Labour government.
Now, Sir Paul McCartney and his family face a fresh tax wrangle after Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves’ Labour budget put his Scottish farm at risk of an inheritance tax blow.
Sir Paul ‘begrudgingly’ purchased High Park Farm in Kintyre in June 1966 for around £35,000 after financial advisors suggested he invest in property amid rising tax charges for Britain’s wealthiest.
That same year – and at the peak of Beatlemania - the band’s hit Taxman was released - in a thinly veiled swipe at the government of the time. The song is said to have been written by George Harrison in response to the astonishing 95 per cent tax which The Beatles would have been subject to.
In the years since Macca bought High Park it’s value will have grown - helped in no small part by his purchase of five neighbouring farms.
However, Labour’s tax hike, which will come into force in April 2026, will see farmers slapped with a 20 per cent tax on inherited agricultural assets worth more than £1 million.
The move has had farmers up in arms with concerns it will force families that have been farming for generations to sell up.
Thousands of protestors swarmed outside Whitehall last week - including TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson - as many claimed the new move signalled ‘the end’ for farming.
Source: Ciaran Foreman/dailymail.co.uk
Ringo Starr always knew the Beatles were destined for success.
The 84-year-old musician was part of the world's best-selling band in the 1960s alongside John Lennon - who was shot dead in 1980 at the age of 40 - as well as the late George Harrison and Sir Paul McCartney and recalled that they were all like "four brothers" at the time who "worked very hard" with full intent of reaching superstardom.
He told 'Entertainment Tonight': "I miss them both, George and John. We were friends, we were like four brothers and we looked out for each other. When we made music, we went through moments where getting a little happy was good. So, we really worked very hard, we had a lot of cups of tea and we could just feel where it was going. For me, it was like psychic, we knew where it was going. No one had to look at you or stamp their foot or whatever.
"We did it together, that's what was great. We had two great songwriters. It was great.
"The Beatles are still doing like five billion streams a year, it's far out!"
The 'It Don't Come Easy' singer then spoke out on the notion that 'Anti-Hero' songstress Taylor Swift has reached a level of fame that is equivalent to that of Beatlemania and recalled meeting the pop star a lot earlier in her career prior to her global success.
He said: "I said she's really big and it's great because Paul and I did several Grammy shows. We met her there all the time, she was with her mum and look at her now. She's done very well."
Source: Bang Showbiz/uk.news.yahoo.com
The impact of The Beatles on the world in general and the United States in particular in 1964 really can’t be measured. “Beatlemania” is a nice way to sum it all up in a single word, yet it simply can’t capture everything that went on in those 12 months, ranging from the insanity of their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show through the making and release of their film, A Hard Day’s Night, and their first tour of America and Canada.
While Disney+ will be debuting the Martin Scorsese-produced documentary Beatles ’64 on November 29, we look at that year in two distinct ways: a behind-the-scenes “tour diary” that chronicles all of the major events during their time on the road in 1964, followed by a breakdown of everything else that went on in between concert performances.
February 11: The Beatles travel from New York via train to perform at the Washington Coliseum. The original plan was for them to fly, but a snowstorm changed the mode of transport. WINS reporter Murray The K, who broadcast his radio show from The Beatles’ hotel suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York, is the one who alerted the group and manager Brian Epstein to the potential weather problems.
Source: Ed Gross/womansworld.com
Listening to it now, Please Please Me, The Beatles‘ initial album release in the United Kingdom, sounds like one of the first times a rock and roll act properly took advantage of the long-playing format. That the group achieved that feat almost unconsciously testifies to their unmatched brilliance.
The Beatles recorded the bulk of Please Please Me in a single session at EMI’s Abbey Road studios in London. In the process, they inadvertently boosted the album as a format within the rock genre.
We now think of rock and roll as being an album-driven medium, as countless artists have attempted to make complete statements over the course of two sides (sometime more) of vinyl. In the early days of the genre, however, the rock album was an afterthought. Please Please Me helped to change that, even if the four lads that created it didn’t necessarily intend that to happen.
Circa 1963, which is when The Beatles recorded and released Please Please Me, rock albums were only granted to artists who’d already banked successful singles. Adding a few more songs of filler allowed them to milk more sales out of a popular song. Since the Fab Four had already delivered one modest hit (“Love Me Do”) and one massive hit (“Please Please Me”), EMI gave them this opportunity.
But they weren’t going to go overboard about it. The Beatles would get a single session to record this album. If it were any other artist, the album would have been filled with the two killer singles and a bunch of forgettable fluff. But these guys were too good for that.
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
A new sneak peek at the upcoming documentary Beatles ’64 has been posted on the Fab Four’s YouTube channel. As previously reported, the movie, which premieres on Disney+ on Friday, November 29, focuses on The Beatles’ historic first visit to the U.S. in February 1964.
The clip features new interview footage of Paul McCartney sharing a humorous story about an interaction he and John Lennon had with his father, James, back in 1963. It appears that Paul’s dad had some reservations about the lyrics to one of the band’s most famous early songs.
“We’d written the song ‘She Loves You’ in the next room, and my dad was in the other room,” McCartney recalled. “So we came in to play it to him [for the] first time.” Paul said he and Lennon proceeded to sing the tune, including its famous chorus, “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.” As they sang, his dad listened and nodded along.
McCartney remembered with amusement that when they finished the song, his father said, “Boys … it’s very nice, but couldn’t you sing, ‘She loves you, yes, yes, yes’? … There’s enough of these Americanisms around.”
The Beatles released “She Loves You” in August 1963 in the U.K. and the following month in the U.S. In the British band’s home country, the song was an immediate smash, spending six non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 between September and early December 1963.
In the States, “She Loves You” didn’t catch on until after The Beatles’ historic appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. It spent two weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in March of ’64. “She Loves You” also was included on the Fab Four’s third U.S. studio album, titled The Beatles’ Second Album. That record was released in April 1964. It followed Introducing … The Beatles and Meet The Beatles!, which both were issued in January 1964.
Source: Matt Friedlander/americansongwriter.com
When John Lennon released his song about heroin withdrawal, “Cold Turkey,” in 1969, radio stations refused to play it because of the lyrics and Lennon’s distorted guitar and screams. Years later, the Beatles also faced a new stream of bans. After 9/11, Clear Channel (later iHeartMedia) sent a memo to more than 1,100+ radio stations under its umbrella with a list of more than 160 songs they suggested pulling from the rotation for being “lyrically questionable” or insensitive to the events. On the list were four Beatles songs.
The Beatles’ songs that were temporarily banned in the U.S., or not played as much, followed the September 11 attacks, and included their 1968 White Album track “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.”
Decades earlier, the band also faced some radio freezes around some of their other songs in the UK.
John Lennon passes his driving test in Weybridge Paul McCartney Ringo Starr and George Harrison are there to congratulate him 15 February 1965 (Photo by Eyles/Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix via Getty Images)
Shortly after its release, UK radio refused to play “I Am the Walrus” for its sexually suggestive lyrics—Boy, you’ve been a naughty girl, you let your knickers down. In 1967, “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” was banned by the BBC for its alleged references to drugs, and the title spelling out LSD.
The BBC also banned “A Day in the Life” for the lyric I’d love to turn you on and the band’s Abbey Road opener “Come Together” for its mention of the brand Coca-Cola.
Throughout their history, the Beatles had their fair share of bans. Here’s a look at three more of their songs that were banned in America following 9/11.
Source: Tina Benitez-Eves/americansongwriter.com
Let’s say you’re an American Beatles fan in the Sixties, Seventies, or Eighties. You chat with a British fan about your favorite albums. But you have no idea what they’re talking about — what is Beatles for Sale? Or With The Beatles? Meanwhile, they’ve never heard of U.S. classics like Meet the Beatles or Something New or Yesterday and Today. You both agree how great Rubber Soul is — but you’re discussing two different Rubber Souls. How can this be?
That’s because the Beatles albums were totally different in the States. The vinyl box set 1964 U.S. Albums In Mono collects the first 7 Capitol LPs rushed out in the first wave of the Beatlemania invasion. (That’s counting A Hard Day’s Night, officially a United Artists soundtrack.) Capitol did not regard the moptops as true artists expressing themselves on wax — the label just wanted to crank out product as fast as possible, before fickle fans fell out of love with these long-haired limey loverboys. So they chopped up the 14-song U.K. albums into 11 or 12-song quickies. The Beatles couldn’t get any of their original albums released intact in America until Sgt. Pepper in 1967. The U.S. version of Revolver left out “And Your Bird Can Sing,” “Doctor Robert,” and “I’m Only Sleeping.”
The 1964 U.S. Albums In Mono box finally gives these records a proper home. These editions have been forgotten by history, ever since the original U.K. versions came out on CD in 1987. But fans will never part with our cherished vinyl of Something New or Beatles ’65 — they remain evergreen classics, even though the Beatles never meant for them to exist.
Source: Rob Sheffield/yahoo.com
Comedian, actor and author Paul Reiser joined host Kenneth Womack to talk about sharing the Beatles with younger generations, his new comedy special “Life, Death & Rice Pudding” and much more on a special bonus episode of “Everything Fab Four,” a podcast co-produced by me and Womack (a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon) and distributed by Salon.
Reiser, the 11-time Emmy Award nominee known for such TV shows and movies as “Diner,” “Aliens,” “My Two Dads” and “Stranger Things,” told Womack he “always wanted to perform. I wanted to get the laughs.” And through co-creating, producing and starring in the hit show “Mad About You,” he got to do just that. Though comedy was always his professional focus, he said he is ultimately moved the most by music – and that all began with seeing the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in February of 1964.
“My older sister was already into them,” said Reiser, “and I have a vivid recollection of being drawn to the TV. There was just this imprint of importance. You didn't know it was going to be the cultural touchstone that it is, but you knew to watch it.” And following that pivotal performance, “They made good on it with one album after another. Specific Beatles songs are imprinted on the moments of my life – of all our lives, really. The music is so good it seems silly to even give it an adjective.”
Source: yahoo.com
Sean Ono Lennon has offered a rare insight into what first inspired him to become a musician.
The US singer – the son of the late Beatles star John Lennon and his wife, artist Yoko Ono – has released a number of well-received solo records and collaborated with fellow musicians including the alt-rock band Cibo Matto. He has also composed several film scores.
In a new interview, Lennon reflected on how his father’s death in 1980 led to him pursuing music to fill a “void”.
“I never played music because I was good at it,” he told People. “I lost my father and I didn’t know how to fill that void. Learning how to play his songs on guitar was a way to process the loss with an activity that made me feel connected to him.
“When you’ve lost a parent, things like that motivate you – because you’re trying to find them. Making music always made me feel like I was getting to know him better.”
Lennon was recently nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Boxed of Special Limited Edition Package, thanks to a major reissue of his father’s 1973 album, Mind Games. The limited edition collection includes remixes produced by Lennon, along with maps, replica art pieces and a coffee table book.
“The whole album is about my mum,” he said of Mind Games. “My dad declared to the world that ‘John and Yoko’ were one word. I think he always had his heart set on her. He was so in love with her. They had a legendary love and I think that this album is infused with that love. You can hear it.”
The Beatles are also up for a Grammy at the 2025 ceremony for their final single, 2023’s “Now and Then”, which is up for Record of the Year. The nod – received 60 years after their first one for “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in 1965 – set a new record for the longest span between nominations, beating previous record-holder Tony Bennett.
Official rules state that although the majority of “Now and Then” qualifies as newly recorded, the archive elements featuring John Lennon, who died in 1980, and George Harrison, who died in 2001, do not meet the definition and are therefore not Grammy-eligible.
In a five-star review of “Now and Then,”The Independent’s Mark Beaumont wrote that the song provides “the rock’n’roll era cultural closure.”
Source: Roisin O'Connor/the-independent.com
