Beatles News
FANS of The Beatles who caught them perform at Port Sunlight's Hulme Hall back in the 1960s are being asked to come forward for a starring role in a tribute show.
World famous Beatles tribute The Mersey Beatles are playing the same towns, cities and venues the original Fab Four did during the days of Beatlemania and will perform at Hulme Hall on October 31.
The band performed at the village hall around four times, most famously on August 18, 1962 when Ringo Starr made his debut as the band's new drummer.
Now The Mersey Beatles want to hear treasured stories and memories from fans of John, Paul, George and Ringo when they played in Port Sunlight in 1962 so they can project them onto a screen at their Hulme Hall show.
Source: Lauren Jones/wirralglobe.co.uk
Following the news of Swedish pop group Abba recording new music after 35 years, singer Adnan Sami says that the greatest reunion “would have been, but could never be and will never be” is of English rock band The Beatles. “The Abba reunion is being flouted as the most anticipated ‘ever’. I do agree, but I also feel that the greatest reunion would have been, but could never be and will never be, is of ‘The Beatles’!” Adnan, who shared a photograph of The Beatles, tweeted on Sunday. The Beatles comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. After their break-up in 1970, they each enjoyed success as solo artistes. Lennon was shot dead in December 1980 and Harrison died of lung cancer in November 2001.
Source: The Tribune
Every June, I attend many shows at the Hollywood Fringe Festival, the annual event taking place on Theater Row and in surrounding areas. But so far, none has impressed me as much as "Rock and Roll's Greatest Lovers" which I saw in June 2014. With music by Anzu Lawson and Joerg Stoeffel, book and lyrics by Anzu Lawson, it told the Romeo and Juliet story of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, two rebels from opposite ends of the world who stood together in the name of LOVE, only to face every kind of hate directed at them from fans, the press, and especially the United States government who viewed the outspoken former Beatle as a threat to the re-election of Richard Nixon in 1968.Playwright Anzu Lawson portrayed Yoko Ono with amazing vitality and honesty about who the misunderstood artist really was back in the halcyon days when she met and married John Lennon, after their chance meeting at a small London art gallery where she was invited to display her off-beat art pieces. Lawson dedicated the play to Yoko Ono for her strength of spirit to carry the message of love to us, still to this day, and for anyone who has ever been misunderstood for speaking their own truth authentically.
Source: Shari Barrett/broadwayworld.com
George Harrison’s estate just announced the debut of HariSongs, a new label that will release selections from Harrison’s archive of Indian classical and world music, as well as his recorded collaborations with artists over the years.
HariSongs’ inaugural reissues are Ravi Shankar’s Chants of India (produced by Harrison) and Ravi Shankar/Ali Akbar Khan/Alla Rakha’s live recording In Concert — 1972, both of which are now available on streaming services for the first time.
The Beatles' guitarist first picked up the sitar during the filming of the group’s preposterous slapstick film Help! in 1965. There was a break in filming during a restaurant scene in which someone gets thrown in a vat of soup while Indian musicians play on in the background, and one of the instruments caught George’s eye.
Source: Morgan Enos/billboard.com
The Beatles were one of the most popular Rock & Roll music groups of all time. The band consisted of John Lennon on guitar, Paul McCartney on bass, George Harrison on additional guitar, and Ringo Starr on percussion. The band flourished in the early- to mid-1960s, growing a passionate following and fan base based upon a global phenomenon known as “Beatlemania.” However, the Beatles began to break-up during the late 1960s, dissolving the group by the end of the decade. The band’s break-up was a long and tumultuous process that developed over a number of years in the late 1960s. The sole cause of their break-up has continuously been debated by modern music critics and popular culture scholars. However, there wasn’t just one cause as to why the band eventually broke up. Rather, the band’s eventual break-up was a cumulative process created by a series of conflicts and setbacks.
Source: David Schoen/sfctoday.com
Pete Best, The Beatles’ original drummer, has made his dramatic stage debut in the new comedy Lennon’s Banjo, which had its world premiere in Liverpool on Wednesday (25) and has received rave reviews (photo: Anthony Robling).
Best has played himself in two performances and will return for one more on the final night of the show’s two-week run at the Epstein Theatre on 5 May. Based on the 2012 novel Julia’s Banjo, written by Rob Fennah and Helen A. Jones, the play (directed by Mark Heller) depicts the quest for the missing banjo on which John Lennon was first taught to play music by his mother Julia. The banjo went missing shortly after Julia’s death.
Source: Paul Sexton/udiscovermusic.com
The estate of George Harrison has launched a new record label, HariSongs, that will focus on Indian classical and world music. The label was launched in partnership with Craft Recordings and will cull releases from the Harrison family archives, including the former Beatle's collaborations with some of the most famous Indian musicians.
The label's first two projects will be reissues of two recently out-of-print records: Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan's In Concert 1972 and Shankar's collaboration with Harrison, Chants of India. Both albums are available to stream and download today, April 27th.
Chants of India originally arrived in 1997 via Angel Records. Harrison produced the album, which Shankar recorded in Madras, India and Henley-on-Thames in the United Kingdom. The project found Shankar drawing inspiration from sacred Sanskrit texts, including the Vedas and Upanishads. The audio for this reissue was sourced and remastered from the original digital master tapes.
Source: Jon Blistein/rollingstone.com
It was “lousy” and “delicious”– a “mistake” and a “uniquely calm and creative oasis”. For The Beatles, the world’s most famous, successful and influential pop group, it was the beginning of the end.
At the end of April 1968, 50 years ago, George Harrison landed in England after 10 weeks studying with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh, northern India. With the Vietnam War escalating and student protests threatening to break out across the US and Europe, the Fab Four withdrew from the fray to study transcendental meditation.
The Beatles were changed by it, for good and bad, and so too was the world, albeit in quieter, smaller ways. The group’s sojourn in the Himalayas was a pivotal moment in the relations between Eastern and Western hemispheres and laid a blueprint for the modern mass-media event.
Source: thenational.ae
In 1956 Julia Lennon showed her son John how she played the banjo and he copied her fingering on his cheap guitar. Julia Lennon was killed in a car accident in July 1958 and nobody, it would seem, knows where her banjo is now. Its value to a collector would be immense, but surely not the £5m suggested in this production.
The fate of Julia’s banjo is the premise for a new play written by Rob Fennah and staged at the Epstein Theatre, the former Neptune Theatre renamed after the Beatles’ manager. The experienced cast have been in some of our favourite TV series, the best-known being Mark Moraghan of Holby City.
A Beatles tour guide and ardent fan, Barry Seddon (Eric Potts), finds a letter written by John Lennon in 1962, cryptically describing where he has hidden the banjo. With two friends (Moraghan and Jake Abraham) who run a souvenir store, they attempt to solve the puzzle. But they need to get into the mind of John Lennon to do that, and “he wrote ‘I Am The Walrus’, for fuck’s sake.” The clever solution depends on information that the audience cannot know: it would have been better if we stood a chance of solving it too.
Source: SPENCER LEIGH/independent.co.uk
I hear that your were 16 or so when you wrote the Beatles hit “When I’m 64.”
Having just attained the title age, I feel qualified to offer this critique of the lyrics:
When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now.
Oh, Paul, such youthful idealism. Male pattern baldness does not begin at 64. If it did, there would be far fewer toupees in the world. The more appropriate age would be 44, if not 34 or — in some cases — even 24.
Will you still be sending me a valentine, birthday greeting, bottle of wine?
I can take or leave the valentine. But, by all means, let’s get the order correct for the wine and birthday greeting. Send the bottle first — it will make the reminder that I’m another year older a bit easier to take.
And maybe don’t say which birthday. After 50, it’s best to just recognize the ones ending in zero and leave the rest to speculation.
If I’d been out till quarter to three, would you lock the door?
Where do I start?
Source: Joe Blundo/Entertainment & Life
