Beatles News
The song doesn’t specifically mention mothers, but John Lennon wrote “Julia” about his own mother, Julia Lennon, who died in 1958 when Lennon was 17 years old. Although a Beatles song, “Julia” just features Lennon singing and playing the guitar, making the song even more poignant. He sings, “Half of what I say is meaningless / But I say it just to reach you, Julia.”
Source: Lottie Peterson Johnson/deseretnews.com
HariSongs is a new record label founded by the George Harrison estate to celebrate the Indian classical music which the former Beatle believed would "help as a balance towards a peaceful daily life."
Harrison died, aged 58, in November 2001 in Los Angeles after battling lung cancer. His remains were cremated and the ashes scattered according to Hindu tradition in a private ceremony at the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in India. He left an estate of almost £100 million (€113m).
HariSongs recently issued its first reissue releases in honour of the legendary Indian musician Ravi Shankar’s birthday - he was born on April 7 1920 - and Ali Akbar Khan’s birthday - born April 14 1922.
Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan’s In Concert 1972 and Shankar’s Chants of India, are now available for the first time via streaming outlets, as well as to download.
Source: rte.ie
From Carlsbad to Santa Barbara, the Southern California coast is peppered with pepper — Pepperland Recording Studios, Pepperdine University, Pepper Lane in Montecito, the Pepper Tree Inn in Santa Barbara just up the road from the Granada Theatre, where choreographer Mark Morris' "Pepperland" had its California premiere Thursday night.
An eveninglong dance program based on parts of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," "Pepperland," of course, felt very much like it belonged. Indeed, in an extraordinary nod to California, Morris even found a way to pepper George Harrison's Indian raga-inspired "Within You Without You" with an Indonesian gamelan lick in the style of the late Californian maverick composer Lou Harrison.
The dance was originally commissioned by the city of Liverpool, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the release of the Beatles' historic album, along with a host of other international presenters, including UC Santa Barbara's Arts & Lectures series. For the next couple of years, it will tour the world. Or maybe even across the universe. It's that dazzling. (Upcoming local performances will be at the San Diego Civic Theatre on Saturday, and at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa in June 2019.)
Source: Mark Swed/latimes.com
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
