Beatles News
The first thing that catches your attention in Across the Universe: The Beatles in India, written by Ajoy Bose is the bright cover with illustrations of the four members of the Beatles sharing cover space along with sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar, Maharishi and all the others that were relevant to the Beatles story in India. However, the back cover art is a real classic that is inspired by Abbey Road and it shows the four band members on Lakshman Jhula. While there is hardly anyone that didn’t know of the long affair that the Beatles had with India, it was about time that an Indian should write about the Beatles episode in India. And, so it came from a veteran journalist, Ajoy Bose. He has authored two books before, one on the Emergency and the other on Mayawati, both extremely political in nature. Thus, it was quite a surprise to see Bose writing on the Beatles.
Source: Kalyani Majumdar/freepressjournal.in
t happened quickly, Derek Taylor’s transformation. You can see it in three pictures, captured over four years. The earliest comes from 1964 when Taylor was The Beatles’ press officer. Accompanying the band on their first full American tour, the one stoked by Beatlemania, he was more like a circus ringmaster than a PR. The snapshot, taken during a Dallas press conference on 18 September, shows him dressed immaculately and negotiating the ensuing chaos – police officers, reporters and fans all pushing and grabbing. This was a timeless look, though the tab-collar shirts, thin-lapel Italian suits, mid-length hair now epitomises the Sixties. Taylor – then a 32-year-old whose background included national service and an educational stint on Fleet Street as a reporter – is in the eye of the storm with his long-haired charges, a solid phalanx battling as best they could.
Source: John Savage/gq-magazine.co.uk
Yoko Ono, widow of slain Beatle John Lennon, and their son, Sean Lennon, were VIP guests at a new exhibition which opened in Liverpool Friday.
The exhibition at the Museum of Liverpool is the first in the world to tell the story of Lennon and Ono in their own words.
Ono, who is 85, was loudly applauded as she, aided by her son Sean Lennon and using a walking stick, told of her affection for Liverpool, birthplace of the former member of the Beatles.
The groundbreaking exhibition, Double Fantasy -- John & Yoko, runs until April 22, 2019 and is expected to attract visitors from across the world.
It celebrates the meeting of two of the world's most creative artists and reveals how they expressed their deep and powerful love for one another through their art, music, film and ongoing "Imagine Peace" campaign.
The exhibition has opened just a day before in the 50th anniversary of the couple's first night together (May 19, 1968), when they worked through the night and produced their first album, Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins.
Source: xinhuanet.com
After months of speculation, the designers behind Meghan Markle‘s wedding dresses have finally been revealed. The royal bride-to-be turned to two trusted female British designers to create her elegant, effortless and timeless wedding day looks that will remain inspirational to brides for decades to come.
After wearing a timeless, custom Givenchy design by the label’s Creative Director Clare Waight Keller featuring three-quarter length sleeves, Meghan decided to take a turn in a sexy direction in a silky, slinky halter Stella McCartney gown featuring an open back.
McCartney is the daughter of rock n’ roll royalty Sir Paul McCartney (who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth alongside the other surviving Beatles in 1997!) and the late musician Linda McCartney. She flew under the royal wedding dress radar, with British brands like Ralph and Russo, Burberry and Erdem all being touted as front runners.
Source: Brittany Talarico /people.com
There’s no question that The Beatles introduced new styles of writing, performing, and especially recording music in the early 1960s. Much of their success comes from the hands of George Martin, the record producer who crafted the inimitable sound of The Beatles. Otherwise known as the “fifth Beatle,” Sir George Martin was the first producer who helped shape the Beatles’ incredible body of work over the course of seven years. Last year, author Kenneth Womack released Maximum Volume: The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin, the first-ever biography about Sir George Martin, tracing his early life and career. The second book of two is ready to hit shelves on September 4, 2018, called Sound Pictures: The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin, The Later Years 1966-2016.
Source: Kendall Deflin/liveforlivemusic.com
A free exhibition celebrating the meeting of John Lennon and Yoko Ono is launching to the public today (18 May) at the Museum of Liverpool.
The arrival of ‘Double Fantasy – John & Yoko’ coincides with this year’s LightNight and the eve of the 50th anniversary of the couple’s first night together on 19 May 1968, when they produced their first album ‘Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins’.
Made possible with the permission of Yoko Ono Lennon, who attended a special preview yesterday, the display draws from Yoko’s private collection and features personal objects alongside art, music and film produced by the world-famous couple. Some of the items on show have never been displayed before.
Open until 22 April 2019, the exhibition uses interviews, quotes and lyrics to tell the story of John and Yoko’s personal and creative relationship along with their political activism and peace campaigning in their own words.
Source: ymliverpool.com
A frail-looking Yoko Ono was spotted visiting two of John Lennon's childhood homes on Friday after traveling from her New York home to Liverpool.
The artist, who was married to Lennon from 1969 until his death in 1980, was in the city to open a museum show dedicated to their relationship, filled with exhibits from her own private collection.
While in Liverpool she visited Mendips, the home where Lennon spent most of his childhood, and took a photo of herself in his bedroom.
Source: Daily Mail
The Beatles were at the heart of the cradle in which our contemporary world was nurtured. And George Harrison was the Beatle whose output was sidelined to the benefit of his peers Paul McCartney and John Lennon. Two documentaries on Netflix offer a chance to assess their relative contributions to popular culture. Do we thank Hitler for the dank irony that his twisted vision of a tyrannical Reich created the perfect climate for the great wave of cultural change that followed in its wake? Would the Sixties have been what they were without him? And the Twenties. A decade you would have loved to have lived through were it not for the knowledge that it was sandwiched, more or less, between the two world wars. Would the Flapper era and the Jazz Age now so closely associated with F Scott Fitzgerald have been what they were without the draconian mayhem that had been their precursor? And does this have any meaning for our current mess of a world?
Source: Tony Jackman/dailymaverick.co.za
"He say one and one and one is three..." Abbey Road by the Beatles is playing through my Bluetooth headphones, sent from my iPhone, music streaming from Amazon Prime, over satellite WiFi, on the commercial jet that is taking me from Phoenix to Long Beach. So much innovation and world-changing disruption in one event. It’s one moment in our modern world.
It got me thinking about the pace and crazy enormity of the changes in our world. The amount of change, and the new industries created by them are so familiar now that I think we take it for granted. Such pretentious deep thoughts are the sort of thing that I enjoy contemplating while trying to ignore the guy in the seat next to me, who is hogging far more than his fair share of the armrest.
The Beatles are a great example of the revolution that is our new norm. Usually, we think about technology chips, machines, and software that turn the world upside down. But the Beatles did the same thing to popular music.
Source: Eric Miller
George Harrison’s life had transformed through his immersion into Indian music and spirituality. However, he experienced issues with maintaining a balance between a simple life versus a “rock star” hedonistic lifestyle. This struggle is chronicled in “It’s All Too Much,” a track from the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine that represents one of Harrison’s most psychedelic compositions.
He wrote the song “in a childlike manner,” Harrison says in I, Me, Mine, and his lyrics drew inspiration from “LSD experiences” that were “later confirmed in meditation.” He cites certain lines that support his assertion: “As I look into your eyes / Your love is there for me / And the more I go inside / The more there is to see.”
In a June 19, 1999 Billboard interview, Harrison explained that he wrote “It’s All Too Much” on the organ, and played it on the recording. During that discussion, he added that he wrote the songs for reasons other than those he gave in I, Me, Mine: “I just wanted to write a rock ’n’ roll song about the whole psychedelic thing of the time.”
Source: Kit O'Toole/somethingelsereviews.com
