Beatles News
George Harrison's first electric guitar has emerged for sale for £220,000.
The legendary Beatle acquired the Hofner Club 40 model in the summer of 1959 as a 16-year-old after trading it for another guitar.
He kept hold of the instrument for seven years as the band went from playing youth clubs to stadiums.
Harrison once described it as "the most fantastic guitar ever", but was persuaded by manager Brian Epstein to give it away to promote their 1966 Germany tour.
His guitar was offered as the star prize for the winners of 'The Best Beat Band in Germany' organised by German music venue Star Club where the band had played in the early 60s.
The competition was won by local band The Faces and the instrument was presented to Frank Dostal, its singer and guitarist.
Dostal kept hold of it until his death last year but his widow Mary Dostal, a former member of Liverpool band the Liverbirds, has consigned it for sale with US based auction house Julien's Auctions.
Source: telegraph.co.uk
Oscar-winning filmmaker Ron Howard said Saturday directing a movie in the Star Wars universe was as daunting as making his Beatles documentary thanks to the intense fan love.
Howard, 64, who made the acclaimed The Beatles: Eight Days a Week ( 2016 ) about the peak years of the Fab Four, told a news conference in southern California he felt just as much pressure on Solo: A Star Wars Story.
"The level of anticipation is unlike anything that I've done. You fall into it and it's amazing. It was a little bit like the Beatles documentary that I took on," said Howard, who won directing and producing Oscars for A Beautiful Mind ( 2002 ).
"I could tell from the moment it was announced, 'Ron, don't (mess) this up.' So I immediately felt the same thing with this. The fans care, and they should care."
Solo, which gets its US release on May 25, charts the adventure-filled past of smuggler Han Solo -- made famous in four Star Wars movies by Harrison Ford -- before he was the galaxy's most adored scoundrel.
The second of three planned spin-offs from Disney-owned Lucasfilm, it follows Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the second highest grossing movie worldwide in 2016.
Source: The Jakarta Post
The song doesn’t specifically mention mothers, but John Lennon wrote “Julia” about his own mother, Julia Lennon, who died in 1958 when Lennon was 17 years old. Although a Beatles song, “Julia” just features Lennon singing and playing the guitar, making the song even more poignant. He sings, “Half of what I say is meaningless / But I say it just to reach you, Julia.”
Source: Lottie Peterson Johnson/deseretnews.com
HariSongs is a new record label founded by the George Harrison estate to celebrate the Indian classical music which the former Beatle believed would "help as a balance towards a peaceful daily life."
Harrison died, aged 58, in November 2001 in Los Angeles after battling lung cancer. His remains were cremated and the ashes scattered according to Hindu tradition in a private ceremony at the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in India. He left an estate of almost £100 million (€113m).
HariSongs recently issued its first reissue releases in honour of the legendary Indian musician Ravi Shankar’s birthday - he was born on April 7 1920 - and Ali Akbar Khan’s birthday - born April 14 1922.
Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan’s In Concert 1972 and Shankar’s Chants of India, are now available for the first time via streaming outlets, as well as to download.
Source: rte.ie
From Carlsbad to Santa Barbara, the Southern California coast is peppered with pepper — Pepperland Recording Studios, Pepperdine University, Pepper Lane in Montecito, the Pepper Tree Inn in Santa Barbara just up the road from the Granada Theatre, where choreographer Mark Morris' "Pepperland" had its California premiere Thursday night.
An eveninglong dance program based on parts of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," "Pepperland," of course, felt very much like it belonged. Indeed, in an extraordinary nod to California, Morris even found a way to pepper George Harrison's Indian raga-inspired "Within You Without You" with an Indonesian gamelan lick in the style of the late Californian maverick composer Lou Harrison.
The dance was originally commissioned by the city of Liverpool, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the release of the Beatles' historic album, along with a host of other international presenters, including UC Santa Barbara's Arts & Lectures series. For the next couple of years, it will tour the world. Or maybe even across the universe. It's that dazzling. (Upcoming local performances will be at the San Diego Civic Theatre on Saturday, and at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa in June 2019.)
Source: Mark Swed/latimes.com
After the girls in the family moved out, my grandparents’ front sittingroom didn’t get used too often. The old venetian blinds cast strips of sun across the carpeted floor where I could be found surrounded by my aunt’s Beatles records. I was eight or nine. I already knew a lot of their albums, but this was the first time I had played Revolver. The arm lowered itself on to the record and then, after the crackle on the outer grooves, came a strange, slow, garbled voice – “One, two, three, four . . .” – followed by electric-guitar stabs that sounded like nothing I’d heard before.
Revolver was when The Beatles stopped being a pop group and became a studio band. The influences of drugs and the avant-garde were finding their way into songs such as I’m Only Sleeping, Doctor Robert and She Said She Said. John Lennon’s Tomorrow Never Knows must have horrified the “typists down at the Cavern”, as the poet Philip Larkin remarked, but I loved it. The jagged guitars and the obtuse lyrics struck a chord with me. And to balance that out there were two of McCartney’s finest ballads, Here, There and Everywhere and For No One.
Source: irishtimes.com
Paul McCartney has topped the 30th annual Sunday Times' Rich List
Topping the 30th annual Sunday Times’ Rich List in the UK music industry, the former Beatle has now seen his wealth rise by a staggering 925 per cent since the list began back in 1989.
The new figure makes him the richest musician in the history of the Rich List, pushing ever closer to the £1billion mark, thanks to the never-ending royalty stream from The Beatles back catalogue, still strong nearly 50 years after the group disbanded.
But the valuation of his fortune has further been bolstered as it also includes the assets of his wife Nancy Shevell, 58.
She is heiress to the huge American trucking concern, New England Motor Freight, which has annual sales of around £330 million.
Sir Paul, 75, who collected his Companion of Honour medal at Buckingham Palace last week for his contribution to music in the UK and worldwide, has further benefited from a 2015 deal that allowed The Beatles’ 13 albums to be available on streaming services.
Source: Mark Reynolds/express.co.uk
Paul McCartney said Thursday he will not come to Israel at the end of May to receive the 2018 Wolf Prize in music, citing scheduling reasons, Hebrew-language media reported. His win will be revoked if he also fails to attend one of the next two award ceremonies in Jerusalem in 2019 or 2020.
It is the second time in the last few weeks a celebrity declined an invitation to come to Israel to receive an award, after Natalie Portman said last month she wouldn’t come to get the Genesis Prize due to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies. Her refusal sparked widespread outrage.
But McCartney didn’t cite political reasons, meaning he may still eventually visit the Jewish state and receive the prize. The ex-Beatle played a warmly received concert in Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park in September 2008. The only other living Beatles member, drummer Ringo Starr, is to perform in Israel on June 23 at Tel Aviv’s Menora Mivtachim arena with his All Starr band.
“It it very flattering and I am grateful to be a winner of this year’s Wolf Prize for Music,” he told the Wolf Foundation, which in February declared the former Beatle a winner of its award, which is handed to laureates every year in a ceremony at the Knesset at the end of May.
Source: Michael Bachner/timesofisrael.com
ROY Young, who has died aged 83, was a rock n' roll star who played with David Bowie and The Beatles but turned down the chance to join the Fab Four. Roy Frederick Young was born on October 20, 1934, in the London borough of Tower Hamlets.
He was evacuated to Oxford at the start of the Second World War, and his family would eventually settle there. His mother Lily was a well-known pub pianist in the city and he played the piano from the age of eight.
When he left South Oxford School in St Aldate's he began performing around Oxford, most frequently at the Carpenters Arms in Cowley. After serving in the Merchant Navy, where he travelled the world and performed many shows for crews and passengers, he auditioned for the TV pop show Oh Boy! in 1958. His rendition of the Little Richard hit Long Tall Sally led producer Jack Good to make him a regular on the BBC Saturday teatime show and its ITV rival Drumbeat. The following year he recorded his first single Just Keep It Up / Big Fat Mama - thought to be a tribute to his mother. After several more singles recorded for Fontana Records he began extensive tours with Cliff Richard and The Shadows, playing clubs, theatres, variety shows and cabaret dinner clubs all over the country.
Source: oxfordmail.co.uk
"The Story of Percy Thrills Thrillington and his debut album, Thrillington, is a puzzle that no one has all pieces." It was assured by playful press release that accompanied launch of album in 1997, a fact as unnoticed as tears in replicator's rain, although its object was neir artificial nor mere imitation. Backwards: It is one of most notable works of Paul McCartney's solo career, finally reprinted on vinyl. Flash of autonomous art, despite being born as instrumental version of anor of his works, Ram (1971), and Phantom album during more than two decades that McCartney took to recognize his signature. Such Thrillington never existed.
Let's back up to 1971, with Turbulences for dissolution of Beatles still bulling and Ram a few weeks to go to market as second post-breakup of McCartney and unique to duet with his wife, Linda (soon to found wings). The soft rock of Ram has only received Loas superlatives in recent years. Warmth on or hand, preceded by an idea of Paul: that orchestral version for which it rests in a trusting arranger, Richard Hewson. The faith was given to him two years ago for those were Days, Mary Hopkin's first single in Apple Records, label created by Beatles. Hewson lacked any experience.
Source: turkeytelegraph.com
