Beatles News
If you’re getting bored of the free pianos in St Pancras station, there’s now a new way to make music while you wait for your train. They’re installing a retro-style jukebox, so commuters can play every top 40 hit from the past 50 years for free. That means you can choose from a whopping 57,000 tunes to entertain (or annoy) you and your fellow passengers with, including 1,255 number ones and 18,162 artists from Frank Sinatra and David Bowie to Ed Sheeran and, er, The Cheeky Girls.
After tallying up the tunes, The Beatles claimed the most top 40 tracks on the music box – a huge 280 – and so to mark the jukebox’s launch it will be covered in colourful crops of hollyhock in a throwback to the Liverpudlian band’s iconic ‘Mad Day Out’ photoshoot, as some of the pix were taken just around the corner from the station almost 50 years ago.
The jukebox will be a permanent fixture underneath Southeastern train platforms 11 to 13, but to catch it sporting its floral Beatles tribute head there from Wednesday May 17 to Saturday May 20, when Londoners will be encouraged to play out classic Beatle beats.
Source: Timeout London
It was 10am on Easter Sunday, 1974, and Iovine had just received a call from Roy Cicala, John Lennon’s go-to engineer at Record Plant Studios in New York.
Cicala had explained that the ex-Beatle urgently needed someone to man the phones… as in, five minutes ago.
Iovine, Record Plant’s always-willing 21-year-old gopher, unquestioningly did as he was asked – but not before informing his mom he wouldn’t be attending church that morning.
Maternal tongue-lashing survived, Iovine pitched up at Record Plant, only to find Cicala and Lennon laughing in his face.
The punchline: this was a test of his dutifulness… and he’d passed.
Jimmy Iovine had just bagged himself a job as John Lennon’s new Assistant Engineer.
This was the moment that Iovine says his life changed forever.
Before he was taken under the wing of Cicala (and Lennon), the now-Beats/Apple Music chief was working go-nowhere jobs in various New York recording studios – while expecting a far less cushy professional destiny to take over.
Having left school with no real qualifications, Iovine believed he’d end up doing what many young men from Red Hook, Brooklyn did in the early ’70s – joining their fathers toiling on the docks.
Instead, Iovine started working on Harry Nilsson’s Pussycats (produced by Lennon, engineered by Cicala), then on to timeless records by Lennon (Rock’n’Roll, Walls & Bridges), Bruce Springsteen (Born To Run, Darkness On The Edge of Town), Patti Smith (Easter), Tom Petty (Damn The Torpedoes), Stevie Nicks (Bella Donna), U2 (Rattle and Hum) and many more besides.
From there, he co-created Interscope Records in 1989, broke Dr. Dre, Eminem, Nine Inch Nails, Lady Gaga… and well, you know the rest.
By: Tim Ingham
Source: Music Business Worldwide
Does the world really need another book about the Beatles? The people behind “In Their Lives: Great Writers on Great Beatles Songs” think so, and they’ve come up with a seemingly irresistible wrinkle: Ask a lineup of literati to choose the Beatles song that means the most to them. Since everyone likes the Beatles, the results are practically guaranteed to please.
Well, maybe. But the most predictable thing about this endeavor is how predictable it is. The Rule of Themed Anthologies says that one-third of such collections will be thought-provoking and insightful, one third will be just okay, and one third will be tossed-off words from writers too guilty or desperate to say no to the commissioning editor. “In Their Lives” satisfies this formula with eerie precision.
The only sensible approach to evaluating such a book is to enumerate the successes, of which there are several. Writing about “Eleanor Rigby,” Rebecca Mead notes, with typical clarity and grace, that the song, “which so perfectly captures the pathos of loneliness, was generated in an atmosphere of intimacy and friendship . . . a product of the extraordinarily fruitful four-way marriage that was the Beatles collaborative.”
By: Michael Lindgren
Source: Washington Post
The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which Rolling Stone named as the greatest album of all time, turns 50 on June 1st. In honor of the anniversary, and coinciding with a new deluxe reissue of Sgt. Pepper, we present a series of in-depth pieces – one for each of the album's tracks, excluding the brief "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" reprise on Side Two – that explore the background of this revolutionary and beloved LP. Today's installment focuses on how Paul McCartney's solo travels after the end of the Beatles' final tour inspired the title track and gave Sgt. Pepper its famous "alter ego" concept.
"Right – that's it, I'm not a Beatle anymore!" George Harrison was heard to exclaim as the band concluded their touring career on August 29th, 1966, with a set at San Francisco's Candlestick Park. His remark bore a touch of hyperbole, but for the next few months, the Beatles effectively didn't exist. That fall afforded the foursome the most substantial stretch of personal time they had ever known as adults, allowing each to finally get to know the man he had become after four years as part of a collective identity.
John Lennon had been the first to venture out, accepting a part in director Richard Lester's satire How I Won the War. It was little more than a glorified cameo, but the role required him to be shorn of his famous mop-top – a metaphor if there ever was one – and film on location in West Germany and Spain. Harrison also went abroad several weeks later, pursuing his love of Indian culture by going to the source. Accompanied by his wife Patti, he made a pilgrimage to Mumbai to study sitar under the tutelage of virtuoso Ravi Shankar. Ringo Starr was joyfully playing the family man, spending time with his wife Maureen and baby son Zak in his Surrey estate, Sunny Heights.
By: Jordan Runtagh
Source: Rolling Stone
As San Francisco gears up to celebrate the golden anniversary of the Summer of Love—where, in 1967, an estimated 100,000 youths, sporting flowers in their hair and LSD on their brains, converged in the Haight-Ashbury sparking the hippie social movement—scores of city structures and buildings will pay tribute to that patchouli-laced era.
One venue’s celebration promises to be especially noteworthy. The landmark Conservatory of Flower building in Golden Gate Park will light up in a myriad of colors.
Illuminate, the group behind the Bay Lights, and Obscura Digital, a creative studio focusing on light-based art, will transform the stark white landmark with a series of illuminated scenes, which according to the conservatory, are “inspired by the rare tropical flowers within and the legacy of San Francisco’s flower children.”
Ben Davis, Director of Illuminate, said in a press release, “We are bringing that light back to where it all began in Golden Gate Park fifty years later with an electrifying, contemporary tribute.”
Groovy.
Light show can be seen nightly from sundown until midnight from June 21 through October 21.
Beatles fans, get your credit cards ready: On May 26, the Fab Four is unleashing a lavish revamp of 1967’s “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in honor of the landmark album’s 50th anniversary. Among the notable features of the reissue are outtakes and alternate versions of songs from the vaults — including the “Pepper”-era double-A-side single “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” — and a new stereo mix of the record that producers claim buffs up the painstaking vibe of the original mono mix.
“They were trying to create this immersive world that the stereo didn’t have,” Giles Martin, the man responsible for the new stereo mix (and, incidentally, the son of the late Beatles producer George Martin), recently told Rolling Stone about the original mono mixing sessions. “Nobody paid much attention to the stereo mix. What we did [today] was work out what they were doing in the mono mix and apply it to stereo.”
It’s a no-brainer that the Beatles team would choose to release a deluxe reissue of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” The LP has sold over 11 million copies in the U.S. alone and remains one of the band’s most beloved records.
From an artistic standpoint, the album ushered in the Beatles’ most expansive and experimental phase, and featured even more studio innovations. “On ‘Pepper,’ it was like starting over from scratch, getting down to the individual tonalities of the instruments and changing them,” engineer Geoff Emerick told Guitar World. “They didn’t want a guitar to sound like a guitar anymore. They didn’t want anything to sound like what it was.”
By: Annie Zaleski
Source: Salon
Unseen footage of the Beatles on the set of their 1965 movie Help! will soon go on sale after the 8mm film was unearthed after 50 years in storage.
Actor Leo McKern, who played the evil swami Clang in the Beatles' second feature-length film, shot the 8mm film while on the set of Help! The Beatles appear in 10 minutes of the footage, which has an asking price of approximately $45,000.
"This is footage taken in 1965 of people who at the time were the most famous people on earth at the pinnacle of their collective career," books dealer Neil Pearson, who is selling the footage, told Reuters.
McKern reportedly filmed the Beatles during the Help! "snow scenes" in the Austrian Alps, with the group tobogganing and messing around with their stunt doubles on set.
There is also footage of candid behind-the-scenes moments between band members, including Paul McCartney smoking a cigarette and taking photographs.
The 8mm reel contains footage of McKern playing with his then-10-year-old daughter Abigail on the Help! set, as well as the Beatles' then-wives and girlfriends on set, the Guardian reports. Leo McKern died in 2002. The "snow scenes" footage remained in the family's garage until Pearson unearthed it while sorting through the McKern family's collection of children's literature.
By: Daniel Kreps
Source: Rolling Stone
Last year, Stella McCartney launched her first millennial fragrance POP, a fresh and feminine scent that champions the notes of tuberose and sandalwood.
It was deemed more than just a fragrance, as the brand wanted to push a message across to the younger generation: ‘It is about a mindset rather than an individual woman,' they declared. 'Bold. Authentic. Irreverent.’
The campaign was equally impactful with millennial stars including Madonna’s daughter Lourdes Leon, the musician Grimes, animal activist Kenya Kiniski Jones, and actress and campaigner Amandla Stenberg taking centre stage. In an era where designer perfumes are declining in favour of niche fragrance houses, it was a clever move for McCartney to delve into a younger market, which amounts to over 13.8 million potential customers.
It was clearly a success though as today, McCartney is unveiling a sequel scent, POP Bluebell, from £44. The fragrance promises to be delicate yet distinctive with the British bluebell note bringing a depth and personality to the collection.
“As human beings, we’re always changing, and POP is evolving with its wearers," the British designer explained. "I really love these girls – their spirit, their independence – and wanted to follow them on the next stage of their adventures. In POP Bluebell they’ve lived life and learnt, and become only more beautiful in the process.”
By: Victoria Hall
Source: The Telegraph
Paul and Linda McCartney weren’t the only ones John Lennon had harsh words for in letter form.
An angry letter that Lennon wrote concerning the distribution of his and Yoko Ono’s experimental album “Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins” is being auctioned off by Boston-based RR Auction.
In the handwritten piece of correspondence, addressed to Martin George of Rock Ink & Roll Ink, the rock icon expresses frustration with difficulty in getting the 1968 record out to the masses.
“Yoko and I got Two Virgins out in spite of being past owners of Apple [the Beatles’ record label]. We made it in May and they f–ked us about till November! Then E.M.I. (who have the real control) wrote warning letters to all their puppets around the world telling them not handle it in any way,” the letter reads.
The album was the first music released by Lennon following the breakup of the Beatles. E.M.I., Apple’s parent company, refused to distribute it due to the fully nude photo of John and Yoko that adorned its front and back.
By: Bryan Hood
Source: Page Six
A collection of sixties memorabilia is being sold off by Welsh singer Mary Hopkin - one of the first artists to be signed to The Beatles’ Apple label.
The Pontardawe -born star, who shot to fame with 1968 UK number one single Those Were The Days, is auctioning off a collection of clothes she wore at the height of her fame, including designer stage dresses when she sang with the stars - and a rare Beatles poster from the cusp of the Fab Four’s superstardom.
The poster is advertising the Beatles’ August 1963 gig at The Pier Pavilion in Llandudno, North Wales, and is expected to auction for £400 to £800.
The same month the band went straight to number one with their second hit, “She Loves You”, marking the eruption of Beatlemania across the world.
The small concert in the north Welsh seaside town was priced at 4/6d, 6/6d and 8/6d, and was part of the Beatles’ tour of smaller venues around the UK. Auctioneer Ben Rogers Jones said: “It was right that the poster should be delivered to our auction rooms in Colwyn Bay, only three miles from the venue where The Beatles played that night.
Source: Wales Online
