Beatles News
Orange Amplification is helping to raise funds for the Salvation Army’s Strawberry Field campaign. This charitable cause aims to reopen the Strawberry Field site, immortalised in the Beatles song ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’.
As a child John Lennon famously used to jump over the wall in the Strawberry Field grounds, where he would play and listen to The Salvation Army band. Lennon grew up just a stone’s throw away from the site which has lain unused for 12 years.
The Salvation Army has owned Strawberry Field since the 1930’s and want to build a hub that offers training, skills and valuable work placements providing real employment prospects to young people with learning disabilities and help them to achieve their full potential. They also hope to open the world famous gates of Strawberry Field to the public for the first time in summer 2019. The tranquil gardens will promote the theme of peace and love and feature a new exhibition dedicated to the history of Strawberry Field, the song and Lennon’s early life.
Source: Andrew Braith/musictalkers.com
Sandie Shaw believes John Lennon would still be alive if he had married her instead of Yoko Ono.
The 71-year-old retired singer had a huge crush on the late Beatles legend - who was murdered on December 8, 1980 - from a young age.
The two musicians would regularly cross paths during the swinging 60s in Britain but she was never able to progress their friendship to a romance, something she regrets.
Sandie - who has two children with Virgin Group co-founder Nik Powell and daughter Gracie Banks with fashion designer Jeff Banks - told the Daily Mirror newspaper: "I loved John and thought he should have married me. He'd be alive today if I had, I would have protected him and taken a bullet for him!"
The 'Puppet on a String' hitmaker - who is now married to third husband Tony Bedford - first met the 'I Am The Walrus' singer at a Beatles concert at The Royal Albert Hall by pretending to be his cousin.
Sandie - who received an MBE this year - recalled: "The Beatles were performing at the Royal Albert Hall so I rang up, saying 'I'm Sandra, John's cousin. I haven't seen him in ages, so I will pop in'.
Source: femalefirst.co.uk
A true blend of the Beatles and opera
Emotionworks Cut Opera presents La Beatles Boheme, a series of opera fusion on the Melbourne CBD Flagstaff Carpark rooftop with a bar. The performances run over two weekends, from Saturday April 21 until Sunday April 29. Cover for extreme weather is supplied.
The rooftop location is a reference to the final rooftop performance of the Beatles. As with most of Cut Opera performances, opera and rock go side by side, telling the story of the four bohemians imagined as the Beatles. In the 90-minute performance takes Puccini’s La Boheme mixed with the best of the Beatles discography.
The show is to be directed by Julie Edwardson, an award-winning director with Opera Australia and the cast will feature both operatic and contemporary singers.
La Beatles Boheme is opens on the Flagstaff Carpark rooftop on Saturday April 21, tickets via Try Booking.
Source: By Holly Denison/beat.com.au
“I had a lot of emotional abuse with my mother; she was schizophrenic,” said Kaya John as she discussed her book, “When Life Sends You Lemons, Make Lennonaid: What John Lennon’s Life Did For Mine” (Balboa Press, 192 pp., $14.99), a story of how The Beatles and, in particular, John Lennon saved her from a path of self-destruction due to, among other things, abusive parents.
“She went into a very dark period where her insane anger just overtook her, and I was the target for it,” continued John. “And on my father’s end, there was very violent sexual abuse and, of course, that’s coming to the forefront in our culture and our world right now in a lot of different areas. It’s interesting because it took me a lot of years to write this book, and the timing of it seems to be rather amazing considering how that’s surfacing.
“A lot of people like The Beatles (and) there’s been a lot of books written about The Beatles but I’ve never read a really serious, personal book, written by a Beatles fan (about) how they affected their life. How they transformed their life, what they learned from The Beatles. And in my case, they helped me survive a very challenging childhood and, I feel, kept me from despair. Now that’s a strong word but it’s true, and they anchored joy into me, and there was a lot going on in my life for a lot of years that wasn’t joyful, but because I had The Beatles, they seriously offset everything else that was happening and kept me from getting into trouble. You know, in the ways that people get into trouble when they have rough childhoods.”
Source: DANNY COLEMAN/njarts.net
In February 1968, members of the legendary rock band, The Beatles, arrived in Rishikesh for a "momentous" sojourn. A teenage rebel — a diehard Beatles fan himself — watched them with keen interest. Five decades later, he has compiled an account of their stay here, and maintains that the three-year period that marked their affair with India was particularly significant in the life of the band.
"This is when The Beatles reinvented themselves from being the world's most famous pop stars into pioneering musical artists, creating new parameters of contemporary music," says Ajoy Bose, who has written an exhaustive account of their journey in Across The Universe: The Beatles in India.
Musical note
Bose, a well-known journalist, finds it interesting that their growing relationship with India, "led by George Harrison, who was particularly into Indian music, culture and religion, went side by side with their experiments with narcotics and psychedelic drugs".
Source: The Tribune
On March 24, a unique archive of photographs of the Beatles will go on sale and is expected to fetch at least $350,000 at auction. Photographer Mike Mitchell was just 18 when he shot the Beatles' first US concert in 1964, and the 413 negatives with full copyright are available to purchase. Mike's story of how the photographs came about is compelling.
"I was in a point in my life where I was learning that photography could take me anywhere," explains Mike, more than 50 years later. Because of the equipment that he had available, Mike shot in black and white without flash and used only available light.
Coming two days after The Beatles legendary appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, Mitchell also attended the press conference before the gig at the Washington Coliseum, before photographing them again a month later at the Baltimore Civic Center. With virtually no restrictions, Mitchell shot with the intention of creating portraits rather than merely documenting the events and was able to move freely about the stage, producing an intimate encounter with a group that was bringing something completely different to popular culture.
Source: Andy Day /fstoppers.com
1. The Beatles first fan was Irish. The Beatles Tune-In author Mark Lewisohn tracked down Pat Moran who was originally from a strict Irish Catholic home in Liverpool. In a letter written to Pat from 1960 Paul McCartney described her as the band's "number one fan." As Lewisohn suggests something in The Beatles story touched Pat deeply, her father wasn't such a fan sending his daughter to confession after committing the "sin" of chattering about The Beatles non-stop. She sent food parcels, gave them money and even arranged a holiday for the struggling musicians before losing touch when joining the Royal Air Force.
2. The notoriously private George Harrison came from an Irish Catholic family on his mother's side. Unusually for the time his grandparents never married. The Beatles Tune-In author suggests the secretive aspect to his family and their suspicion of "nosy neighbours" had a lasting effect on Harrison's attitude.
3. John Lennon's mother Julia survived an IRA bomb on 3rd May 1939. Julia Lennon worked as an usherette in the Trocadero cinema where one of two tear-gas bombs went off that night. There was no loss of life but fifteen patrons were treated in hospital.
Source: Richard Purden/irishpost.co.uk
In February 1968, members of the legendary rock band, The Beatles, arrived in Rishikesh for a "momentous" sojourn. A teenage rebel -- a diehard Beatles fan himself -- watched them with keen interest. Five decades later, he has compiled an account of their stay here, and maintains that the three-year period that marked their affair with India was particularly significant in the life of the band.
"This is when The Beatles reinvented themselves from being the world's most famous pop stars into pioneering musical artists, creating new parameters of contemporary music," says Ajoy Bose, who has written an exhaustive account of their journey in "Across The Universe: The Beatles in India".
Bose, a well-known journalist, finds it interesting that their growing relationship with India, "led by George Harrison, who was particularly into Indian music, culture and religion, went side by side with their experiments with narcotics and psychedelic drugs".
Source: IANS/business-standard.com
In what is quite possibly one of the most nostalgia-inducing pieces of music ever created, one man has combined two of the 20th century’s most popular cultural creations into one super tune.
Josef Kenny has worked in production and remixes for other people, and writes music inspired by synth-pop and funk, but the Eleanor Rigby battle theme might be his best work yet.
Combining the famous Beatles song with the battle music from early Pokemon games, it really is a treat for the ears as well as the memory.
“I based the arrangement on the music from the first-generation, original Pokemon games,” Kenny told the Press Association. “Specifically the music that plays when you encounter a wild Pokemon.
“Junichi Masuda’s battle music for that game is quite similar to George Martin’s backing string arrangement for Eleanor Rigby,” he continued.
Source: independent.ie
Move over, Brooklyn Beckham and Chloë Grace Moretz—there may be a new young power couple in town: Ava Phillippe and Arthur Donald.
After stunning the world at Le Bal des Débutantes in Paris, many assumed Ava Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe's glamorous daughter, may have been interested in Maharaja Padmanabh Singh of Jaipur, who escorted her to the debutante ball. But it turns out she may have her eye on someone else. While on the London leg of the press tour to support her mom in A Wrinkle in Time, Phillippe and Arthur Donald, a grandson of Paul McCartney, were spotted heading to Sketch, an all-pink 18th-century tearoom turned cocktail lounge.
Arthur, the son of Stella McCartney's sister, the photographer Mary McCartney, recently left the United Kingdom for the United States to continue his studies at Yale. Phillippe has yet to announce which university she will be attending, but in July 2017 her dad told the hosts of Live! with Kelly and Ryan that she will be college bound very soon. Hopefully we'll get those happy campus move-in pics soon enough, just like we got with Malia Obama and Brooklyn Beckham.
Source: by Brooke Marine/The Descendants
