Beatles News
Growing up, my dad hated The Beatles. Then again, my dad also hated being a dad and basically opted out of that role. Let it be, as Paul would say. But when you’re a kid with that kind of emotional absence plenty of surrogate dads step in. These men seem to sense their loving expertise is desperately needed; teen girls, for all our haughty skepticism need earnest devotion like we need air. So, my Beatles dad was my choir teacher, a lowkey musical genius named Dana Libonati who, for some reason, taught choir in my tiny hometown of McMinnville, Oregon. Before I met Rob Sheffield I was positive no one on the planet loved The Beatles more than Dana (I’m not being disrespectful, he insisted we call him by his first name).
I mentioned he was a musical genius? Dana used to create his own personal arrangements of Beatles songs designed for four or five parts so my choir could sing them. We did “Gotta Get You Into My Life.” “Can’t Buy Me Love.” “In My Life.” So many more.
Source: Caitlin White/uproxx.com
Forty-four years ago this month, former Beatle Paul McCartney and the members of his current band, Wings, arrived in Nashville for a month-long vacation and rehearsal. McCartney and his entourage stayed at a farm just outside Music City owned by famed songwriter Curly Putman Jr. ("D-I-V-O-R-C-E," "Green, Green Grass of Home") and made a visit to the Grand Ole Opry, which, to McCartney's disappointment, had recently moved to Opryland from the location the Liverpool native was anxious to visit, the Ryman Auditorium.
On June 16th, McCartney and his wife Linda were among the audience at a historic Opryland performance featuring longtime partners Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner, with Parton telling the crowd it's "the last time we'll play together."
Source: Stephen L. Betts/rollingstone.com
Sir Paul McCartney will forever be one of the world's most successful and best loved musicians.
He has been a prolific songwriter and performer ever since his teenage days in the Quarrymen in the late 1950s, and shows no signs of slowing down.
We've picked our very favourite Paul McCartney songs (not including his work with The Beatles otherwise we'll be here all day, or Christmas tunes) to make for a perfect Macca setlist...
1. 'Maybe I'm Amazed'
McCartney dedicated this song to his wife Linda, who had helped him get through the break-up of the Beatles. Despite it being one of his best known solo songs, he never actually released it as a single.
Source: smoothradio.com
In honor of Paul McCartney’s birthday today (June 18), we look back during the magical time when the Beatles ruled the world and changed the face of music forever.
Enjoy these classic Beatles images!
Source: John Lennon Fan
The Beatles – “Love Me Do”
HIT #1: May 30, 1964
STAYED AT #1: 1 week
“Love Me Do” was eight years old by the time it hit #1. A 16-year-old Paul McCartney had written most of the song while skipping school in 1958, with his friend John Lennon helping out on a few parts. The two of them hadn’t even formed the Beatles yet. “Love Me Do” was also the Beatles’ first single; they released it in the UK toward the end of 1962. They recorded three different versions of it with three different drummers, though the one that featured the newly recruited Ringo Starr was the one that ended up coming out. The song only made it to #17 in the UK, but it established the group as something. It was only a beginning.
Source: Tom Breihan @tombreihan /stereogum.com
Friday came and went without the new Paul McCartney album a television report said was headed our way, but the Beatles legend continues to drop hints that something big may be announced soon.
This morning, that included tweeting out an image that looks an awful lot like an album cover, featuring what appears to be a red ticket on a yellow background with his name and the letters "N.B.P." on it.
If McCartney is about to release a new album - and if you still feel like speculating, tomorrow (June 18) is his birthday - it would be his first collection of new material since New, in 2013.
McCartney had been hinting at at releasing new music this year, mentioning on his website in January that he was “putting the finishing touches” on a new album.
Source: ultimateclassicrock.com
With his big, expressive eyes and lovely compositions that leaned toward the sweeter side of the Beatles' catalog, it's easy to get why Paul McCartney, among his mop-topped mates, was pegged early on as "the cute one." And though he reportedly didn't love that label, he never did shy away from those sillier aspects of his personality guaranteed to raise a smile. Here, in honor of his 76th birthday (June 18), a nostalgic look back at Paul at peak adorable. (Pictured above: pulling faces on his 22nd birthday during a tour in Sydney, 1964.)
Source: Keystone/Getty Images
More remarkable than the admittedly poor audio quality of the performance itself is George Drynan’s off-the-cuff interviews with St. John Ambulance attendants and crowd members, all of whom assumed he was a reporter owing to his button-down appearance and professional manner.
On Aug. 17, 1966, amid the din and hullabaloo of what would be the last-ever Beatles concert in Canada, nobody seems to have noticed the middle-aged man in the stands with a reel-to-reel tape recorder. He was George K. Drynan, QC, a day-tripping father of three, war veteran and sedan-owning Rotarian who travelled to Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens from Oshawa, Ont., with his wife – the accomplished organist, composer and choirmaster Margaret (Peggy) Drynan – and a family friend. The oldest son, John, handled the driving. Younger son James also attended the show, but had arranged separate transportation.
Source: Brad Wheeler/theglobeandmail.com
Even as recently as the 80s, visitors to Liverpool could have been forgiven for not realising they were in the birthplace of The Beatles. Things changed when, in 1984, a dedicated museum to the group – Beatle City – opened on Seel Street, in the city centre. That museum boasted the greatest collection of Beatles memorabilia ever brought together – the prize exhibit was the original Magical Mystery Tour bus, restored to its psychedelic glory, which offered tours of the former Fabs’ family homes, and various other places of interest in and around the city. But that museum was plagued by financial difficulties and so closed its doors for the last time after less than two years.
What Beatle City had demonstrated, however, was that there was an appetite for Beatles tourism – a fact not lost on the people behind the then-burgeoning Cavern City Tours enterprise, who have been behind most major Beatle-related projects in the city for 35 years.
Source: Paul McGuinness/udiscovermusic.com
Richard Nixon tried to get John Lennon thrown out of America because he saw him as a ‘counter-culture enemy’, according to a new documentary.
The former US President was so paranoid the Beatles singer could inspire the youth vote against him that he wanted him deported.
Lennon biographer Tim Riley said that Nixon regarded the Liverpudlian as ‘dangerous political leader’ and wanted him gone before the 1972 US election. According to ‘John Lennon: It Happened Here’, which is screening on US TV network Reelz, Lennon’s anti-war views and support of free speech made him a target for Nixon.At the time Lennon was living in New York where he recorded ‘Imagine’ in 1971 after the break-up of the Beatles.
He also staged his ‘Bed-In for Peace’ with his wife Yoko Ono where they stayed in bed for a week to call for peace.
All of this turned Lennon into an icon on the left at a time of protests over the Vietnam War and rising suspicion of the US government.
Riley said that the Nixon White House took the threat posed by Lennon so seriously that they ‘decided to attack his immigration status’.
Source: Daily Mail
