Beatles News
Paul McCartney gets to “hang out” with dead Beatles pals John Lennon and George Harrison – in vivid dreams.
Macca, 76, said they’re so real he has to pinch himself afterwards.
He said: “I often have dreams about John or George. I often dream about people who aren’t here any more.
“It’s one of the great things about dreams – you get to re-meet them and you get to hang out with them.
“They tend to be very good. And it’s only when you get to wake up you go, ‘Oh yeah, it was a dream’.”
Lennon was shot dead aged 40 by deranged fan Mark Chapman in 1980. And George died of cancer in 2001 aged 58.
Sir Paul, who has just released new album Egypt Station, also admitted moments of self doubt and insecurity – just like his friend John.
Source: Mirror
Record producer Quincy Jones has described the Beatles as the “greatest songwriters that ever lived”.
In February, it was reported he had labelled the seminal British group as the “worst musicians in the world” and called Paul McCartney “the worst bass player I ever heard”.
New York Magazine also quoted him as saying of Beatles drummer Ringo Starr: “And Ringo? Don’t even talk about it.”
On Saturday, Jones appeared at the Carousel of Hope ball in Los Angeles and said the reports were “BS” before heaping praise on the band.
He told the Press Association: “They’re the greatest songwriters that ever lived. McCartney is like my brother, Ringo too.”
Jones, 85, has picked up 27 Grammy awards and a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame during an illustrious career.
When asked for his thoughts on Kanye West, Jones made a zipping motion across his lips.
Source: irishexaminer.com
Sound engineer Geoff Emerick died Tuesday at age 72.
The Beatles had become a phenomenon with Rubber Soul and Meet the Beatles, crafting intricate, melodic tunes, but the Fab Four were growing creatively restless. They wanted to expand the band’s sound, to push the limit of what a song could be — so by 1966, they quit touring and focused on doing just that.
And now Lennon wanted to sound like the most important Gelug monk sitting on a mountain for the psychedelic Revolver cut Tomorrow Never Knows. In today’s world, computer programs for such sonic alteration abound — just look at the rise of Auto-Tune. But at the time, the studio itself was considered a place to record musicians, not an instrument in and of itself.
"When I was asked by George Martin, 'Do you want to do the Beatles?' I was just terrified, and the little eeny-meeny-miney-moe thing (in my head), it stopped on 'Yes, I'll do it.' — Geoff Emerick
Source: Travis Andrews/winnipegfreepress.com
A short film inspired by one of the most infamous conspiracy theories in rock has been released.
The Paul Is Dead conspiracy originally kicked off when Sgt. Pepper was released, where the back cover pictured McCartney with his back to the camera, next to the words ‘Without You’, as if he'd been replaced for the session by a doppelganger. It gathered pace following the release of Abbey Road, where a series of supposed clues hinted at McCartney's apparent demise.
Paul Is Dead tells the story of what might have happened had the cheery mop top actually died. Rather than taking its cue directly from the conspiracy, which has McCartney perishing in a car accident, the film places the band a retreat in the Lake District, where he passes away after an unintended drug mishap. The remaining Beatles set out to replace the dead musician with a local singer, Billy Sheers, and to secretly bury the deceased atop a nearby hill.
Source: By Scott Rowley/loudersound.com
For the most part the original name of the their self-titled album “The Beatles,” got an additional tag and has been universally re-christened, “The White Album,” and for one really good reason, the sleeve is all white!
As far as “re-releases” go and the never ending “deluxe” album packages that have flooded the market, this is one I am truly looking forward to! This was “the” Beatles album that I was able to get lost in. I grew up on my Mom’s record collection so the Fab Four (among a slew of other Rock artist) was predominate in my life. (Thanks Mah!)
On Friday, November 9th the 50th anniversary of The Beatles White Album will take place and is one date I am seriously looking forward to. Hell the expanded version of Helter Skelter alone is worth the price of admission, and if that wasn’t enough the legendary (pronounced eee-sher) “Esher Demos” are part of the package as well!
Source: Haze/nh1.com
London's world famous AIR Studios, originally founded by Beatles producer Sir George Martin in 1969, has been sold to a Russian investor for an undisclosed sum.
The studio was put up for sale earlier this year by its owners Richard Boote and Paul Woolf, both aged in their late 60s, who wanted to pass it on to someone younger who could grow the business.
Its new owner has not been officially named, but Billboard understands it to be Maxim Demin, a Russian businessman who has fully owned British Premier League soccer club Bournemouth since 2013.
The Financial Times has also named Demin -- a low profile figure who does not give press interviews and is believed to have made his fortune in the petrochemicals industry -- as AIR's buyer. The studio, based at Lyndhurst Hall in Hampstead, North London, is yet to comment.
Source: Richard Smirke/Billboard
Expansive new mixes, and newly unearthed demos and alternates of John Lennon’s chart-topping 1971 album “Imagine” were publicly unveiled before a sold-out audience at L.A.’s Grammy Museum on Wednesday night.
The event at the museum’s Clive Davis Theatre — featuring appearances by remix engineer Paul Hicks, director Andrew Solt, drummer Jim Keltner, and Lennon friend and confidant Elliot Mintz — prefaced Friday’s release of Capitol’s major new boxed set devoted to the album, and Eagle Vision’s DVD and Blu-ray re-release of Solt’s feature documentaries “Imagine: John Lennon” and “Gimme Some Truth.”
The evening aptly began with a clip of Lennon, alone in Ascot Sound Studios at his Tittenhurst Park estate in England, hurling himself into the roaring lead vocal for the key “Imagine” track “Gimme Some Truth.”
Source: Chris Morris/variety.com
Beginning in January, a new UCLA course will tell the story of the Beatles through the prism of film. Offered by the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music’s music industry program, the class will screen documentaries, television appearances and feature films — and students will hear firsthand accounts from industry executives and musicians, further illuminating the visual and aural record of the legendary band.
The course, “The Reel Beatles,” is open to undergraduate and graduate students. It will be taught by David Leaf, an award-winning filmmaker and biographer, who was a co-writer, director and producer of the 2006 documentary “The U.S. vs. John Lennon.”
Source: Ariane Bicho / newsroom.ucla.edu
In 1968, Yoko Ono and John Lennon shocked Beatles fans with the release of their experimental album Two Virgins. Fifty years later, the world is finally catching up with Ono.
For decades, she was unfairly blamed for the Fab Four’s breakup, and her art and songwriting abilities routinely dismissed by the press. But that blame has been exposed as knee-jerk rock-world misogyny, and Ono’s avant-pop work, both with and without her late husband, has been embraced by a new generation. Her 1973 album Feeling the Space—chronicling the feminist struggles of the ’70s and envisioning an end to “2,000 years of male society”—seems radically prescient today. And her surrealist wisdom and anti-war agitation have made her a Twitter favorite.
Source: Zach Schonfeld /newsweek.com
Geoff Emerick, the Grammy Award-winning engineer and producer who was the Beatles’ chief recording engineer during their career, died Tuesday of heart failure, according to his manager William Zabaleta. He was 72.
While he worked with many artists over the course of his long career — including Elvis Costello. Badfinger, Supertramp, Cheap Trick and America, among many others — his work with the Beatles and the solo Paul McCartney stands apart.
Paul McCartney remembered his longtime colleague and friend in a pair of posts on social media and on his website today. In the social media post, he wrote, “Though the Beatles had many great engineers over the years, Geoff was the ONE.”
The statement on his website follows in full below:
Geoff Emerick (1946 – 2018)
Source: Variety
