Beatles News
After the girls in the family moved out, my grandparents’ front sittingroom didn’t get used too often. The old venetian blinds cast strips of sun across the carpeted floor where I could be found surrounded by my aunt’s Beatles records. I was eight or nine. I already knew a lot of their albums, but this was the first time I had played Revolver. The arm lowered itself on to the record and then, after the crackle on the outer grooves, came a strange, slow, garbled voice – “One, two, three, four . . .” – followed by electric-guitar stabs that sounded like nothing I’d heard before.
Revolver was when The Beatles stopped being a pop group and became a studio band. The influences of drugs and the avant-garde were finding their way into songs such as I’m Only Sleeping, Doctor Robert and She Said She Said. John Lennon’s Tomorrow Never Knows must have horrified the “typists down at the Cavern”, as the poet Philip Larkin remarked, but I loved it. The jagged guitars and the obtuse lyrics struck a chord with me. And to balance that out there were two of McCartney’s finest ballads, Here, There and Everywhere and For No One.
Source: irishtimes.com
Paul McCartney has topped the 30th annual Sunday Times' Rich List
Topping the 30th annual Sunday Times’ Rich List in the UK music industry, the former Beatle has now seen his wealth rise by a staggering 925 per cent since the list began back in 1989.
The new figure makes him the richest musician in the history of the Rich List, pushing ever closer to the £1billion mark, thanks to the never-ending royalty stream from The Beatles back catalogue, still strong nearly 50 years after the group disbanded.
But the valuation of his fortune has further been bolstered as it also includes the assets of his wife Nancy Shevell, 58.
She is heiress to the huge American trucking concern, New England Motor Freight, which has annual sales of around £330 million.
Sir Paul, 75, who collected his Companion of Honour medal at Buckingham Palace last week for his contribution to music in the UK and worldwide, has further benefited from a 2015 deal that allowed The Beatles’ 13 albums to be available on streaming services.
Source: Mark Reynolds/express.co.uk
Paul McCartney said Thursday he will not come to Israel at the end of May to receive the 2018 Wolf Prize in music, citing scheduling reasons, Hebrew-language media reported. His win will be revoked if he also fails to attend one of the next two award ceremonies in Jerusalem in 2019 or 2020.
It is the second time in the last few weeks a celebrity declined an invitation to come to Israel to receive an award, after Natalie Portman said last month she wouldn’t come to get the Genesis Prize due to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies. Her refusal sparked widespread outrage.
But McCartney didn’t cite political reasons, meaning he may still eventually visit the Jewish state and receive the prize. The ex-Beatle played a warmly received concert in Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park in September 2008. The only other living Beatles member, drummer Ringo Starr, is to perform in Israel on June 23 at Tel Aviv’s Menora Mivtachim arena with his All Starr band.
“It it very flattering and I am grateful to be a winner of this year’s Wolf Prize for Music,” he told the Wolf Foundation, which in February declared the former Beatle a winner of its award, which is handed to laureates every year in a ceremony at the Knesset at the end of May.
Source: Michael Bachner/timesofisrael.com
ROY Young, who has died aged 83, was a rock n' roll star who played with David Bowie and The Beatles but turned down the chance to join the Fab Four. Roy Frederick Young was born on October 20, 1934, in the London borough of Tower Hamlets.
He was evacuated to Oxford at the start of the Second World War, and his family would eventually settle there. His mother Lily was a well-known pub pianist in the city and he played the piano from the age of eight.
When he left South Oxford School in St Aldate's he began performing around Oxford, most frequently at the Carpenters Arms in Cowley. After serving in the Merchant Navy, where he travelled the world and performed many shows for crews and passengers, he auditioned for the TV pop show Oh Boy! in 1958. His rendition of the Little Richard hit Long Tall Sally led producer Jack Good to make him a regular on the BBC Saturday teatime show and its ITV rival Drumbeat. The following year he recorded his first single Just Keep It Up / Big Fat Mama - thought to be a tribute to his mother. After several more singles recorded for Fontana Records he began extensive tours with Cliff Richard and The Shadows, playing clubs, theatres, variety shows and cabaret dinner clubs all over the country.
Source: oxfordmail.co.uk
"The Story of Percy Thrills Thrillington and his debut album, Thrillington, is a puzzle that no one has all pieces." It was assured by playful press release that accompanied launch of album in 1997, a fact as unnoticed as tears in replicator's rain, although its object was neir artificial nor mere imitation. Backwards: It is one of most notable works of Paul McCartney's solo career, finally reprinted on vinyl. Flash of autonomous art, despite being born as instrumental version of anor of his works, Ram (1971), and Phantom album during more than two decades that McCartney took to recognize his signature. Such Thrillington never existed.
Let's back up to 1971, with Turbulences for dissolution of Beatles still bulling and Ram a few weeks to go to market as second post-breakup of McCartney and unique to duet with his wife, Linda (soon to found wings). The soft rock of Ram has only received Loas superlatives in recent years. Warmth on or hand, preceded by an idea of Paul: that orchestral version for which it rests in a trusting arranger, Richard Hewson. The faith was given to him two years ago for those were Days, Mary Hopkin's first single in Apple Records, label created by Beatles. Hewson lacked any experience.
Source: turkeytelegraph.com
You are aware of India’s contradictions from the moment you land in Mumbai. Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport is a thing of sleek steel and glass, complete with its own waterfalls, clusters of rainforest, faux life-size temples and state-of-the-art art. But just outside, families live in large corrugated tin cans, piled on top of each other like human filing cabinets, and everyone acts like this is perfectly normal.
Let me tell you why I’d come to India. About a year ago I met Pattie Boyd, the ex-wife of George Harrison and later the ex of Eric Clapton. She travelled with the Beatles to India back in 1967, when they hung out with the Maharishi in Rishikesh. I’m sure a seed was planted in my brain back then, which influenced the rest of my life, right up to my recent interest in mindfulness. So when I met Pattie, I brazenly asked her if she ever planned to return to India, and if so, could I come too?
Source: telegraph.co.uk
The Beatles’ final studio release Let it Be was an effort to get back to the basics. The album was recorded almost completely live and had little to no over-dubbing or effects. This, however, didn’t last long.
Phil Spector was brought in after the fact to add string arrangements and choir, and then suddenly “basic” was quickly in the rearview.
The album served as the soundtrack to the film of the same name. Even more humorous is that an album with a peaceful-sounding title like Let it Be was recorded in such a hostile environment, despite the film omitting the band's numerous tensions.
In spite of this, Let It Be would go on to yield classics like the title track, “Across the Universe,” “The Long and Winding Road” and “Get Back.”
Released a month after The Beatles broke up, Let It Be would top the charts all over the world. The corresponding film was released on May 13, which featured the iconic rooftop concert that was the band's final public performance.
Source: Erica Banas/wror.com
Dozens of battered black equipment cases line the stage of the Keller Auditorium on the morning of April 17. Sound and lighting cables snake around the cases, finding their way to amplifiers and control consoles. Battens - long steel pipes hung from the ceiling that span the width of the stage - have been lowered to waist level, and an assembly line of stagehands affix lights and backdrops to them.
In a few hours, cast members of "RAIN: A Tribute to The Beatles" will arrive for rehearsal - but until then, the stage crew is busy unloading equipment and assembling the stage.
Loading in and setting up a large stage production like RAIN is a performance unto itself. The cast is made up of stage hands, sound and lighting technicians, engineers and carpenters. The set is made up of equipment cases, unassembled set pieces for the show, lighting rigs, speakers and amplifiers, and miles of electrical cables. All the action is directed by stage and productions managers.
"Hey, Marty, can we get the screen pipe in?” one manager shots.
“All cables run off stage left!” yells another.
The crew work in small teams to complete various tasks including assembling arrays of hanging loudspeakers, tying a painted cloth backdrop onto a lowered batten, and tuning all of the musicians’ instruments.
Source: Pierce Girkin/Metro News
Peter Asher has revealed he is ready to run to Sotheby's with the music at a moments notice
The number is World Without Love, a discarded Beatles track written by Macca which he kindly donated to the then unknown Peter and his music partner Gordon Waller, aka harmonising, cut glassaccented British folk rock duo Peter and Gordon.
The mournful but catchy ditty became a number one smash hit for them on both sides of the Atlantic in 1964 as part of the "British pop invasion" led by The Beatles and made university student Peter - older brother of McCartney's teenage actress girlfriend Jane Asher - an overnight star.
"Paul wrote out the words and the chords of the song for me on a piece of paper," recalls Peter.
"You'd better believe I've locked it away in a safe for the time when the music business goes completely to hell and I can run to Sotheby's like the wind," chortles the delightfully humorous and self-deprecating Peter, 73.
Source: Kathryn Spencer/express.co.uk
The Edgewater Hotel in Seattle has transformed two of their suites into a super-fan's wildest dreams, paying homage to two of the most iconic rock bands of all time.
The Beatles-inspired suite is 750-square-feet, with a king bed, living room, dining area, fireplace and European spa bathroom. Beatles albums, LP covers and Beatles-related art span the walls of the suite, which overlooks Elliott bay and the Olympic mountains. The Beatles stayed in room 272 of the hotel in August 1964, the site of their famous window fishing photos.
The Pearl Jam suite was designed with the assistance of the band and its fan club. Industrial, grunge-inspired decor line the walls, including a Mother Love Bone logo which rests above the bed. The hotel has pledged 10 percent of all proceeds from the room from now until Pearl Jam's Seattle shows in August to end homelessness in Seattle.
Source: Eddy Lim/mixdownmag.com.au
