Beatles News
Sir Paul McCartney relished the "competitive" nature of his relationship with John Lennon.
The iconic duo penned some of the most famous songs in history during their days with the Beatles, and Sir Paul has revealed how the late star's determination to be the best helped to improve his own songwriting.
He explained: "It was quite competitive because if I wrote something he'd try and better it and then I'd try and better that, so it's a good system.
"It means you're going up a staircase and each time you're trying to make it better, so if that works it can make the song very good ... and in our case memorable.
"That was the trick because we couldn't put it down, we couldn't put it on a recording like today, you just had to remember it. So that was a good restriction too, it meant if you forgot it, too bad.
"So, it had to have a hook and nearly always, even if you forgot it in the evening, you'd go out for a drink and say, 'what was that bloody song'. You'd wake up in the morning an go 'oh yeah, I remember!' It would just come back."
The Beatles split in 1970, but Sir Paul never considered quitting music altogether, admitting it remains his obsession.
He told Australia's ABC: "It was either that or quit. And that was the decision at the time but I realised I liked music too much and if I quit, I'd still be doing it as a hobby.
"If you're a good cook, and they suddenly say 'Ok, you've won MasterChef', it's not like you're going to stop cooking.
"It's something you love doing, same for me, it's something I love.
"I'm always surprised when a song comes because I started with nothing and suddenly get a little idea I'm chasing and go 'ah, is this good?'. If you write something decent, you feel good. It's all part of the same thing. It can be a little bit of a therapy thing to."
Paul McCartney's long-lost Christmas album Unforgettable has been posted on YouTube more than 50 years after it was created.
Simon Wells, a Beatles fan who shared the video online, said McCartney made the album as a Christmas gift in 1965 for his bandmates John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. According to the Huffington Post, only three additional copies were made in addition to McCartney's original, which he created in his home.
Per Mark Unterberger's book, The Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film, McCartney told Mark Lewisohn in 1995 how the album came about.
"I had two Brenell tape recorders set up at home, on which I made experimental recordings and tape loops, like the ones in 'Tomorrow Never Knows,'" McCartney said. "And once I put together something crazy, something left-field, just for the other Beatles, a fun thing which they could play late in the evening. It was just something for the mates, basically."
The album features McCartney playing the role of a DJ as he introduces a playlist of various songs. There is no new content on the album from The Beatles or McCartney, but it features hits from The Rolling Stones, Elvis, and Nat King Cole, who sings the title track.
While there is no word on how Wells got a copy of the album, McCartney told Lewisohn that he always believed there was a copy out there.
"Unfortunately, the quality of these discs was such that they wore out as you played them for a couple of weeks. There's probably a tape somewhere, though," McCartney said.
Source: Huff Post
Ozzy Osbourne says that he owes his whole career to the Beatles.
The former Black Sabbath frontman was speaking to the End The Silence campaign by charity Hope And Homes For Children, which has been encouraging artists from across the music world to reflect on songs that made a difference to their lives when they were younger.
Ozzy chose She Loves You by the Fab Four and adds: “That song changed my life. She Loves You had such an impact on me. I remember exactly where I was. I was walking down Witton Road in Aston, I had a blue transistor radio and when that song came on I knew from then on what I wanted to do with my life.
“This was so brand new and it gave me a great feeling. Then I became an avid Beatles fan – they were great.
“I owe my career to them because they gave me the desire to want to be in the music game.”
Source: Team Rock
Sir Paul McCartney has had the same dream that he's flopping on stage for 50 years.
The Beatles legend might have been attracting massive crowds to his shows for more than five decades, but the 75-year-old musician is left in " cold sweats" at the thought of turning up to perform and stadiums full of people getting up and leaving.
McCartney - who has four adult children with late wife Linda and 13-year-old Beatrice with second spouse Heather Mills - admitted: "Ever since I started performing there is a dream I still have which is you are in a stadium playing with The Beatles or with this band and people start leaving and it is like 'OK what are we doing wrong' we try to pull out the big ones but they're still leaving. You wake in a cold sweat."
The 'Come Together' hitmaker is currently in Australia for his sold-out 'One On One Tour'.
Source: GV News
He's one of the most famous people on the planet and has been performing on stage for almost six decades. But at 75, Paul McCartney still has anxiety dreams about getting up in front of a crowd.
"Ever since I started performing there's like a recurring dream which is, and I still have it to this day, which is you're in a stadium and you're playing with The Beatles or with a band and people start leaving and it's like, 'OK, what are we doing wrong?'" he said.
"And we're trying to pull out the big one like, 'Quick, play Hey Jude, quick!' And they're still leaving.
"'Quick, Long Tall Sally!' And they're just drifting away and you wake up in a cold sweat."
The former Beatle sat down with 7.30 at the start of his Australian tour in Perth.
Rediscovering the old hits
Despite what you might think, he's not sick of playing his old songs.
"The funny thing is, particularly these days, it's like I'm rediscovering them," he said.
"You don't just sing and think of nothing. So I'm thinking of being in the studio with the guys when we did it.
"I'm thinking of how I wrote it, and on some of them I'm looking at them thinking: 'This is a 24-year-old kid who wrote this', which happens to be me. I'm thinking: 'This isn't bad, it's pretty good'.
"So that's what keeps you going. You're always hearing lines in the songs. Like Eleanor Rigby: 'The face that she keeps in a jar by the door' … you go and rediscover it as you go along."
When creating the setlist for his concerts, he said he asks himself: "If I was going to a Paul McCartney concert, what would I want to see?
Source: Leigh Sales
Ex-Beatles drummer Pete Best is set to make his acting debut in Liverpool in a new comedy called Lennon’s Banjo.
The show - about a quest to find the instrument that John Lennon first played music on - will be performed at the Epstein Theatre next spring.
Best will play himself in the brand new comedy stage production which runs between Tuesday, April 24 and Saturday, May 5 2018.
Written by Rob Fennah, the story focuses on Lennon's missing banjo which is considered to be the holy grail of pop memorabilia.
The instrument has been missing for six decades and it is now worth millions to the person that discovers it.
Source: Liverpool Echo
Sir Paul McCartney has helped a Perth man propose to his girlfriend 10 years after the couple met on a Contiki tour and bonded over their love of the Beatles.
Martin held a sign up at the rock icon's concert on Saturday night and was brought to the stage during the encore to pop the question to Saya, with McCartney instructing him to get down on one knee.
He then signed Saya's Beatles jacket and joked: "It's going straight up on eBay."
The clearly overwhelmed couple hugged McCartney and thanked him for making their night special as he kicked off the Australian leg of his One on One world tour, but they weren't the only ones.
The crowd lapped up every minute of the Englishman's set, which ran for more than three hours and included many beloved Beatles and Wings hits.
The show opened with classics, including A Hard Day's Night and Can't Buy Me Love, before McCartney took his jacket off.
"That was the one and only wardrobe change of the evening," he quipped.
Unlike many pop stars, McCartney never needed flashy costumes.
He shook his bottom, strummed several guitars and played the piano with so much energy, it's hard to believe he is 75 years old.
His bandmates were equally enthusiastic and the music was loud, but not so much that it drowned out the sound of McCartney's still relatively strong voice.
It was about halfway through the concert when McCartney requested a "Beatles scream" from the audience and they happily obliged.
"Take me back, baby!" he enthused.
Source: AAP
Sir Paul McCartney has donated a rare album to raise funds for the families of Eilidh MacLeod and Laura MacIntyre.
Eilidh, 14, died in the Manchester Arena attack on May 22, while her friend Laura, 15, was seriously injured.
Soon after the tragedy Sir Paul donated a special Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band 6 Disc Super Deluxe (50th Anniversary Edition) box-set which will be auctioned to raise funds for the two families, who are from Barra in the Outer Hebrides.
The album will be personally dedicated and personalised to the successful bidder.
It will be auctioned in the run-up to the 40th anniversary of one of Sir Paul’s Wings songs Mull of Kintyre reaching number 1 at Christmas in 1977.
The girl’s parents said the gesture is “amazing and brilliant’.
Source: Manchester Evening News
She's fast approaching the big 5-0.
But the ever youthful Heather Mills, 49, rolled back the years in a backless floor length floral gown at the Brilliant Is Beautiful gala in London on Friday.
The former wife of Paul McCartney showed off her enviable figure as she posed for pictures along the red carpet clearly lapping up the attention.
Chic: Heather Mills, 49, rolled back the years in a backless floor length floral gown at the 'Brilliant Is Beautiful' gala in London on Friday. The former wife of Paul McCartney showed off her enviable figure as she posed for pictures along the red carpet, lapping up the attention
Turning heads in the floor length dress, Heather posed cheekily in the dress which boasted semi-sheer inserts along the seem. And twirling for pictures, she flashed the flesh with a backless insert fastened at the neck.
Heather's dress, with Japanese lily flourishes, was tapered in around the waist before billowing out to skim the floor.
Letting her short blonde tresses fall to her shoulders, Heather wore a smattering of light makeup to highlight her natural good looks.
Source: Daily Mail
Kenneth Womack’s new book on George Martin
is the first of two volumes (the second comes out next year), and it seems to be the first biography of the Beatles producer, which is kind of surprising. That alone makes Maximum Volume: The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin, The Early Years 1926-1966
a significant work in and of itself (although Martin himself wrote a pair of memoirs in the ’90s, the first of which—1994’s All You Need Is Ears
—Womack sources for insight into his early years).
Womack's book, perhaps unsurprisingly, is dominated by Martin’s working relationship with the Beatles, which began in 1962—quite late in the 40 years this first volume surveys—but takes up more than three quarters of the text. While Martin’s pre-Beatles years are covered more than adequately, it might have been fun to dive deeper into his groundbreaking work producing comedy records with the likes of Beyond the Fringe and Peter Sellers, much of which demanded wild creativity in the studio and stood him in good stead when the Beatles began to expand beyond their two-guitars-bass-and-drums sonic template. Britain’s “satire boom” of the early ’60s contributed a huge part to the Beatles’ DNA, something that often gets overlooked by critics and fans.
Source: Portland Mercury
