Beatles News
Eric Clapton wrote an album for Pattie Boyd while she was married to George Harrison. Here's how she reacted when she listened to it.
As George Harrison’s marriage to Pattie Boyd grew chillier, Eric Clapton’s feelings for her heated up. Harrison and Clapton were friends, but this did little to stop Clapton from pursuing his wife. While she was still with Harrison, Clapton wrote an album about her, and then invited her over to listen to it. He later admitted that this was not one of his best ideas.
Eric Clapton said his method of pursuing Pattie Boyd didn’t go over well
After Clapton and Harrison became friends, the former began to develop feelings for Boyd. The way he felt for her flamed into what he described as obsession, and he wrote the album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs about her. He hoped that when she heard it, she would admit to feeling the same way about him.
“I had convinced myself that when she heard the completed Layla album, with all its references to our situation, she would be so overcome by my cry of love that she would finally leave George and come away with me for good,” he wrote in Clapton: The Autobiography. “So I called her up one afternoon and asked her if she’d like to have tea and listen to the new record.
Source: cheatsheet.com/Emma McKee
The best creative inspiration often comes from observing the world around us, and these Beatles songs about real-life events are certainly no exception. And indeed, the Fab Four had plenty going on in their respective realities, personally and globally, from which they could draw inspiration for lyrics, song titles, and more. From the changes happening in their own lives to the tumultuous air of change that permeated the 1960s, the Beatles took these events and transformed them into great music.
Here’s some of the best.
“Hey Jude”
For most of the Beatles’ tenure, John Lennon was with his first wife, Cynthia Lennon, with whom he had his first son, Julian. By the late 1960s, John divorced Cynthia, married Yoko Ono in March 1969, and had his second son, Sean. Paul McCartney, who had been like an uncle to Julian, wrote “Hey Jude” while driving to visit Julian and Cynthia.
“I thought, as a friend of the family, I would motor out to Weybridge. Tell them that everything was all right,” McCartney recalled in Anthology. “To try and cheer them up, basically, and see how they were. I would always turn the radio off and try and make up songs, just in case. I started singing: ‘Hey Jules, don’t make it bad, take a sad song and make it better.’ It was optimistic, a hopeful message for Julian. ‘Come on, man, your parents got divorced. I know you’re not happy, but you’ll be okay.’”
“A Day in the Life”
“A Day in the Life” is the sprawling closer to the Beatles’ 1967
Source: americansongwriter.com/Melanie Davis
The death of John Lennon remains incomprehensible some 45 years after it occurred. You can imagine how dumbfounded people were in the immediate wake of that tragedy. Still, some artists were able to rise up from their sadness and deliver fitting tributes to him.
The four artists included on this list include two who were in the same band as Lennon and another who collaborated with him on a No. 1 single. As for the fourth, he, like everybody else, was just trying to make sense of it all.
Harrison was able to get his tribute to Lennon out the fastest of this bunch because he already had much of the framework of the song in place, right down to the title. He had written it originally for Ringo Starr to record, but Starr struggled with the vocals and decided against recording it. Upon Lennon’s death, Harrison adjusted the lyrics to pay tribute to his friend. Starr plays drums, while Paul and Linda McCartney sing backing vocals, making this a semi-reunion. But the observations of Harrison take center stage. His candor is balanced out by his genuine emotion: Living with good and bad / I always looked up to you. “All Those Years Ago” gave Harrison a comeback hit, although he’d quickly back away from the spotlight again after its release.
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
After John Lennon left The Beatles, his life took a drastic turn to a dark place. One historically prominent period that displays how his behavior changed is when he went on an 18-month bender in Los Angeles. This is known as the “Lost Weekend,” and it transpired because he and Yoko had separated and started having an affair with their mutual assistant, Molly Pang.
This period is when he met Joni Mitchell for the first time. Lennon had always been a fan of the folk world, and he admired Bob Dylan in particular. However, he didn’t really admire his female counterparts such as Joan Baez and, ultimately, Joni Mitchell. Despite their many similarities, Joni Mitchell and John Lennon did not hit it off. Consequently, the two wouldn’t really go on to have much of a professional or friendly relationship. John Lennon Thought Mitchell’s Music Was Over-Educated
When Mitchell was recording and cutting her infamous album, Court and Spark, Lennon was right across the hall cutting and creating one of his own projects. That being so, Mitchell wanted to get Lennon’s opinion on her work. This decision would lead down a bad road and a not-so-kind conversation. A conversation that would lead Lennon to say that Mitchell’s album was a “product of over-education.”
Recalling the incident, Mitchell stated, “I was cutting Court and Spark; he was cutting across the hall, so I played him something from Court and Spark” and “[Lennon] said, ‘You want a hit, don’t you? Put some fiddles on it! Why do you always let other people have your hits for you, y’know,’” per Farout.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Peter Burditt
Paul McCartney is concerned Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) could steal from artists if the U.K. government approves changes to its copyright law. A new proposal would permit A.I. developers to use creators’ content on the internet to assist in developing A.I. models unless the holder of the rights “opts out.” For instance, an A.I. developer could not use a songwriter’s song if the songwriter notifies the A.I. service providers that they do not give permission for A.I. companies to use the songwriter’s music.
As some opponents of the proposed bill have claimed, the “opt out” provision is not reasonable since it is not possible for a rights holder to notify thousands of A.I. companies to inform them that they do not give permission to use their creative content.
Another question that arises is, how would individual creators monitor all the A.I. service providers to see if their creative content is being used by A.I. companies without their permission?
Source: musicconnection.com/Glenn Litwak
Paul McCartney recently reissued his band Wings’ album Venus and Mars for its 50th anniversary, and he’s giving fans a way to enjoy the music together.
The rocker just announced a new global Venus and Mars listening party Friday at 1 p.m. ET. Those taking part are asked to share their favorite Venus and Mars songs, lyrics and memories.
Meanwhile, in a Q&A on his website, McCartney answered some questions about what it was like touring with Wings after the release of Venus and Mars, which saw the band going from clubs to stadiums.
“After The Beatles, we had this tiny little band that didn’t have any hits and didn’t even know each other, except for me and (wife) Linda (McCartney) obviously. And Denny Laine, who I knew a little,” McCartney shares. “We were almost an amateur outfit, but we knew we would work at it and we did. We built it brick-by-brick.”
“In 1976 we did the big American tour and it was like, ‘Wow, this is it!’ That was the payoff, after all that work,” he explains. “This crazy idea of just getting a few friends together and doing little clubs and building it and learning how to be a group – it worked.”
Finally he notes, “It was the justification of the way we’d done it, with the world’s craziest idea – that after you’ve been a Beatle, you go down to little clubs or places you don’t even have bookings, like on the university tour. It was very daring.”
Source: wxhc.com/Jill Lances
Eric Clapton thought he'd help out George Harrison by promoting a Beatles album. Harrison was not happy with his friend's actions.
George Harrison and Eric Clapton had a friendship that survived some unbearably rocky periods. Clapton, for example, actively pursued Harrison’s wife, Pattie Boyd, while they were still married. Before this, though, he infuriated Harrison with what he thought was helpful behavior. Here’s why his way of promoting a Beatles album didn’t go over well with the band.
In 1968, Clapton recorded a guitar solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” a song Harrison wrote. Because of this, Harrison gave him an advance copy of The White Album. He took it upon himself to do a bit of promotion for the album.
“When I left the following month to go to America on Cream’s farewell tour, I took these [acetates] with me,” he wrote in Clapton: The Autobiography. “While I was in LA, I had been playing some of the songs on the album to various friends when I got a phone call from George.”
Source: cheatsheet.com/Emma McKee
The piano was the last instrument John Lennon is known to have played before his death in 1980. The last piano ever used by John Lennon before he died is set to be played for the first time in 30 years. The New England Piano Company upright has been at the Beatles Story museum in Liverpool since 2015.
The former Beatle used it at the Record Plant studios in New York for his last album, Double Fantasy, released shortly before his death in 1980. Brad Kella, winner of Channel 4's The Piano, will be at the museum to play his own arrangement of the famous Lennon hit Imagine later.
Kella, 24, told the BBC he had been a Beatles fan since childhood, growing up in the Merseyside town of Bootle and later Fazakerley in north Liverpool. He said: "It's just something that's embedded into anyone that's in the city. It's just an honour to be able to say I've touched the same instrument.
"I think it's the last instrument he touched before he died, as well, so it's just an honour to be able to follow in those footsteps." Brad Kella, in a grey hoodie and baseball cap, plays the piano.
Source: bbc.com/Marc Waddington
John Lennon and Paul McCartney met and fell for each other in the summer of 1957. John was 16, Paul 14. Paul came to see John play with his skiffle group, the Quarry Men, at a village fete. Introduced afterwards, they almost immediately formed a connection that went beyond the bounds of normal male friendship.
Lennon and McCartney were not sexual partners, as far as we know. But in every other sense, their relationship was a romance: intoxicating, tender and bittersweet. Passionate male friendships like this are rare, but not unique, and a remarkable number of them have changed the world, transforming our ideas about music, art, poetry and human nature. John and Paul were, without knowing it, part of an extraordinary lineage.
After impressing John with his guitar-playing and his ability to remember all the words to a song, Paul accepted John’s invitation to join the Quarry Men. The pair began sharing the front of the stage; this was no longer just John’s group. They were fascinated by each other. Paul admired John’s coruscating wit and teddy boy swagger. John admired Paul’s musical abilities and pop star good looks. They made each other laugh more than anyone else they knew.
They made for an odd couple: John spiky, full of bravado, prone to anger; Paul more temperate and socially subtle. But each thought the other the most brilliant person they knew and they shared a fierce ambition. On weekday afternoons, they would bunk off from school (for Paul) and college (for John) and go to one of their houses to play songs.
Source: theguardian.com/Ian Leslie
Yoko Ono’s family have shared how the artist is spending her final days after the death of her husband John Lennon. Now aged 92, Yoko’s family says she is “in a happy place”, and is “listening to the wind and watching the sky” after losing Beatles star John in 1980 when he was only 40 years old.
Yoko – best known for her activism and for helping Lennon write his hit song Imagine – has been profiled in a new book releasing this week, which paints her as a reclusive figure in her early nineties. She lives alone in upstate New York on a farm, but is thankfully visited by her son Sean and daughter Kyoko. Kyoko wrote of her mother: “She believed she could change the world, and she did… now she is able to be quiet – listen to the wind and watch the sky.” She added: “She is very happy, in a happy place. This is well deserved and genuine peacefulness.”
Source: express.co.uk/Jess Phillips
