Beatles News
It’s the 50th anniversary of the release of the White Album (officially titled The Beatles) and the 1968 film Yellow Submarine. Celebrate the world’s love for the Beatles with this exclusive essay from author Ann Hood.
I fell in love for the first time on February 9, 1964. Like all first loves, this one hit hard—the racing heart, the weak knees, the way that everything around me seemed to disappear except me and the shaggy-haired, brown-bedroom-eyed boy singing to me. When he told me, “Darling, I’ll be true,” I believed him. I was 7 years old, and that winter night, I knew that someday I would grow up and marry Paul McCartney.
I was the kind of kid who liked to memorize things—the birthstone for each month, the astrological signs and state capitals. I used that same determination to learn everything I could about Paul. Most of my facts were gleaned from magazines like Teen Talk and 16, so the veracity of much of what I learned was shaky. But he really was, of course, from Liverpool, England.
Source: Parade
As expected, Paul McCartney will appear in a new episode of “Carpool Karaoke,” joining host James Corden for broadcasts of “The Late Late Show” out of London on June 18 through 21. The “Late Late Show” airs on CBS in the U.S. and on Sky One in the U.K. and NOW TV.
Other guests on deck for London week include Chris Pratt, Damian Lewis, J.J. Abrams and Ruth Wilson in addition to the previously announced Cher, Cate Blanchett, Orlando Bloom, Niall Horan and Foo Fighters.
Variety reported on Monday that the Beatles legend and the British television personality were seen filming together in Liverpool. Said Liverpool Beatles tourguide Jackie Spencer: “[McCartney] was being really nice to everybody. He was backing people in so they could get pictures with him. He and James Corden were taking selfies. And they just walked back, got in the car and disappeared off and went ’round Liverpool. It was fabulous.”
During the “Carpool Karaoke” segment, McCartney gives Corden a tour of his hometown of Liverpool as they sing a few of his hits.
McCartney is expected to announce a new album imminently having provoked some social media talk when, after replacing his Twitter profile picture with a white box Saturday, he changed it Sunday to a drawing that appears to show, depending on your interpretation, a train into a tunnel or a pyramid.
Source: Variety
It’s the opening track from the legendary White Album… but what angst did the jolly rock ’n’ roll classic hide?
With the planet’s football teams heading to Russia for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, we’ve been reminded of the classic Beatles song Back In The USSR.
With the sound of squealing aircraft engines and a screech of guitar, this is a pure piece of Beatles rock ’n’ roll that kicked off the Fab Four’s ninth studio album, titled simply The Beatles, but named by everyone “The white Album” after its blank sleeve design. But the song hid a secret - The Beatles had started to split up.
The song is a perfect Paul McCartney pastiche of the Beach Boys’ happy go lucky style: it’s a spoof of the US band’s carefree California Girls, but with a satirical spin. In this version, the narrator is exclaiming how happy he is to be back behind the “Iron Curtain” in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Source: radiox.co.uk
A maritime welfare charity that helped The Beatles when they fell on hard times has released a new book, which includes how it fed George Harrison horsemeat in Hamburg.
Whenever they played Hamburg, the band visited Sailors’ Society’s seafarers’ center. John and George both had fathers who were seafarers and recognized the charity’s name from its center in Liverpool.
Sailors’ Society works with seafarers and their families around the world providing practical and emotional support. It also runs centers where seafarers can take time away from busy ports.
The charity’s CEO, Stuart Rivers, said: “When we started gathering stories together for the book, we didn’t know exactly how we’d supported The Beatles. “There were rumors they composed songs on the center’s piano, but to find out we fed them horsemeat at Christmas was a bit of a surprise!”
Source: maritime-executive.com
"It was twenty years ago today Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play," begins the tune introducing the 1967 Beatles album that music scholars by and large consider the apotheosis of pop. At the time of its release, 20 years probably sounded like an eternity to young Beatles fans. How surreal it is, then, to fast approach the 50th anniversary of Yellow Submarine, the animated film featuring that record's fictional Lonely Hearts Club foursome. Half a century flies when you're having fun.
That's certainly the way Ron Campbell sees it. Over a five-decade career, the Australian-born animator, now 78, brought a mind-boggling array of iconic cartoon characters to life — and not just on the big screen. For television shows, including "The Jetsons," "The Flintstones," "Scooby Doo" and "Rugrats," Campbell has done everything from storyboarding to directing. His work has earned Peabody and Emmy awards along the way.
Source: Rick Kisonak/Seven Days
The Beatles are no longer walking along Main Street, but they will soon return.
The mural painted by artist Gregg Payne, which depicted Fab Four as they were on the “Abbey Road” album cover photograph by Iain Mcmillan, has finally come down after adorning a wall on the 100 block of Main Street for more than 20 years. Workers painted over the mural early last month as part of renovations for an incoming restaurant, but that job went mostly unnoticed as the area was covered by fences at the time.
The decision to remove the mural was a difficult one, building owner David Halimi said, adding that it was part of a compromise with his new tenant and the artwork will be repainted nearby. The new tenant, Will Brady, owner of B-Street Public House and The Banshee, is opening a restaurant in that space.
The new tenant didn’t feel that it went with the theme of his business, Halimi said, and with the building undergoing work to restore it to its original look and add lofts and studios, the art no longer matched the direction in which the building is going.
Source: chicoer.com
The Beatles – “She Loves You”
HIT #1: March 21, 1964
STAYED AT #1: 2 weeks
On the July afternoon in 1963 when the Beatles were settling in to record “She Loves You,” a horde of screaming girls broke into their studio and had to be chased out. And “She Loves You” sounds like the sort of song that you might record after being rescued from an adoring mob. It’s got a nervous, exhilarated energy to it — always pushing forward, never settling down. And after a lifetime of thinking of Ringo Starr as a goofy conductor on a kids’ TV show, it’s instructive to hear him let loose here. In those early Beatles days, he was an absolute motherfucker, and the breathless momentum that he generated had a lot to do with what made those songs so great. The hook from “She Loves You” is what everyone remembers. And even though the phrase “yeah yeah yeah,” had shown up in plenty of pop songs before “She Loves You,” it still became a kind of totem with this track, with grown-ups immediately dismissing the band’s yeah-yeah-yeah music and kids adapting it in their own songs whenever possible. But there’s lyrical subtext to the song, too.
Source: Tom Breihan/stereogum.com
In February of 1964, halfway through my sixth-grade year, the Beatles came to America. By coincidence, Aunt Shirley was returning from a trip to England on the same day the Beatles were landing at the recently renamed John F. Kennedy Airport. When we went to pick Shirley up, the airport was still crawling with dazed teenage girls; the Beatles had landed a mere couple of hours earlier. On the drive back into town, Shirley revealed that she had originally been booked on the same Pan Am jet that the Beatles were on, but at the last minute had changed her flight to TWA because, she explained, they had this great new feature: a projector was set up at the back of the aisle and a screen up front, and they showed a movie. I was aghast: For this, Shirley had missed being on the same plane as the Beatles?
Source: Ben Fractenberg/forward.com
There are moments where history changes very, very quickly — floodgates open, landscapes reshape themselves, comets crash into land. When the Beatles finally arrived in America, that was one of those inflection-point moments.
In terms of sheer popularity — nothing else, just popularity — the Beatles did things that nobody else will ever accomplish. Between 1964, when they first showed up on our shores, and 1970, when they finally broke up, the Beatles had 20 singles that appeared at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. They spent a grand total of 59 weeks at #1. As a commercial entity in America, they only really lasted six years, and yet they spent more than a year of that time at #1. After they broke up, every member of the band had multiple solo songs that made it to #1 — yes, even Ringo. As solo artists, they kept hitting #1 into the late ’80s. Their run was baffling, monumental. They were vikings, visigoths, conquistadors. They ransacked our land and left it looking completely different.
It was instantaneous, more or less. The band was a phenomenon in the UK all through 1963, but Capitol, the American subsidiary of their label, was reluctant to release their music over here. Instead, the band released a couple of singles on smaller labels in the US in 1963.
Source: Tom Breihan/stereogum.com
This image appeared as McCartney’s Facebook profile picture on June 9, 2018. One fan commented: “Wow! A white horse in the snow…beautiful!”
Fact: The Beatles released their two-record album The Beatles (aka the “White Album”) on Nov. 22, 1968 in Britain. (America had to wait three more days.)
Fact: The Beatles released their acclaimed Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album on June 1, 1967 in the U.K. (U.S. audiences got it on June 2.)
Fact: Apple Records Ltd., in conjunction with Capitol Records and Universal Music commemorated the 50th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper with an elaborate reissue campaign – with remastering overseen by Giles Martin, son of George – in a variety of formats. A Super Deluxe Edition of 4-CDs/1-DVD included a mono mix, a stereo mix and a slew of outtakes and other goodies. These releases proved to be massively successful in terms of sales and well received by fans and critics.
Source: bestclassicbands.com
