Beatles News
Throughout the past three decades, drummer Zak Starkey has enjoyed a unique career that shows no signs of slowing down. The son of legendary Beatle Ringo Starr (real name: Richard Starkey), the younger Starkey inherited the drumming bug and has successfully navigated the upper echelons of rock ever since, whether drumming for Oasis or joining the performing lineup of The Who in 1994.
Aside from prepping for an upcoming summer tour with The Who, Starkey is hot off of a series of gigs at South by Southwest with latest project SSHH alongside partner Sshh Liguz. The long-gestating electro-punk project is readying for an album later this year, and today on Billboard, Starkey premieres the video for a SSHH cover of the Bob Marley/Peter Tosh-penned classic “Get Up, Stand Up." He also talks life on the road with The Who, how SSHH came to be, and teaming up with Mick Jagger’s activist daughter Lizzy to spread a message of equality.
You’ve been playing with The Who since 1994 and have a tour coming up with them this summer. How do you prepare for something like that?
How it started last time was, I walked off the plane in London and went straight straight into a windmill. We arrived at 10 in the morning, was in rehearsal by 11 and we were in three days rehearsal for Tommy and then we did the Tommy shows, and then four of our hits shows. We do very little rehearsal. When John Entwistle was alive, we didn’t do any!
As the years go on, does this touring lifestyle get easier or harder?
I think it gets easier. Especially with The Who because I think everyone is a little bit mellower and more comfortable with how it rolls since it’s more of a hits show now, and not the kind of freeform blood bath that we sometimes used to do. Me and Roger (Daltrey) find this a bit more fun. It’s always an ordeal that’s always worth it. Though Pete (Townshend) can hurt himself some nights. Those guys have still got a bit of energy, but they also got to take it easier at their age, I hate to say it.
Your dad is Ringo Starr and you were very close with Keith Moon. What’s your earliest memory growing up?
Keith Moon was my dad’s best friend, or one of them, and he kind of took me under his wing. Me and my brother used to stay with him and spend weekends, stuff like that.
By: Rob LeDonne
Source: Billboard
John Lennon's original album art sketch for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band will anchor Julien's Auctions' upcoming sale in New York City. The "Music Icons 2017" auction will take place May 20th at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square.
The drawing was found in a sketchbook uncovered at Lennon's former home in Surrey, England, where he lived with his first wife Cynthia starting in 1964. Lennon wrote several Beatles hits in the Surrey mansion, as well as much of Sgt. Pepper's. The early album artwork sketch features a bass drum emblazoned with the LP's title and is estimated to be worth between $40,000 and $60,000.
Along with the Sgt. Pepper sketch, "Music Icons 2017" will feature other Beatles memorabilia including a Lennon-signed "Please Please Me" album cover, a George Harrison-signed Fender guitar used by the Beatle and a program page from 1963, which all four Beatles autographed.
A number of Beach Boys items are also set to hit the auction block including photographs, manuscripts, handwritten notes and lyrics, music sheets and band contracts. Several Elvis Presley items will also be up for sale, including his first piano and the King's chest X-ray.
By: Jon Blistein
Source: Rolling Stone
James McCartney is a man of few words, preferring as it were to let his music do the talking.
So McCartney, the only son of Paul and Linda McCartney, doesn’t turn up with a lot of hype. Nor does he do anything to contribute to any buzz that would be generated by talking about his life and family, playing Paul’s songs or, in an opposite strategy, coming out against his dad’s kind of music.
Rather, the 39-year-old simply plays his own songs — he’s released a pair of EPs and two albums since 2010 — and flies quietly under the pop culture radar.
After spending his first two and a half years on the road with Paul McCartney and Wings, James grew up in the county of East Sussex in southeast England, attended the local state secondary school, and in 1998, graduated from Bexhill College, near his East Sussex home, having studied art and sculpture.
A guitarist since he was 9, when his father gave him a Fender Stratocaster once owned by Carl Perkins, McCartney played on a pair of Paul McCartney and Wings albums, taking a guitar solo on 1997’s “Flaming Pie” and contributing guitar and percussion to 2001’s “Driving Rain.”
By: L. Kent Wolgamott
Source: Daily Herald
Rock ’n’ roll staples don’t come much bigger than “Twist and Shout.”
More than half a century since it was first penned by Bronx-born songwriter Bert Berns (and his occasional partner Phil Medley), it can be heard everywhere from cable reruns of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” to encores at Bruce Springsteen concerts. It’s even been adopted as the unofficial fan anthem of Coventry City FC — a once-elite English soccer team.
But, as explored in the new documentary “Bang! The Bert Berns Story” (out now), it was a song that went through some changes.
Here’s how the classic came about.
The Top Notes (1961)
Berns (also known as Bert Russell) wrote “Twist and Shout” with a slight Afro-Cuban swing to it. Atlantic Records honcho Jerry Wexler heard it and presented it to a struggling R&B duo called the Top Notes. A young Phil Spector produced this version, adding rewrites and a changed tempo — much to Berns’ fury. It flopped.
By: Hardeep Phull
Source: The New York Post
PHOTOGRAPHER Mike McGear McCartney’s passion in photography has led to an out-of-the-box thinking that fuels his thirst to discover, develop and see the common surroundings in a fresh perspective.
Composing an image is simple but with a little thought plus a creative angle, Mike, gives a freshness and progression to the common perspective.
He encourages young people to be observant of their surroundings and see things with a fresh angle.
Mike, who is the younger brother of Paul McCartney from the famous English group Beatles, said teenagers who have a higher-than-average exposure to arts, be it photography, music or drama tend to take their imagination a step further that allows them to create something from abstract ideas.
It was Paul who gave Mike a Rollei camera in 1962, which made him pursue photography.
“Photography, music and drama allows a person to explore their own creativity,” he said.
Mike said he was grateful to his late father, Jim McCartney, a cotton salesman and part-time pianist, who encouraged him to pursue music by giving him and his brothers a guitar and banjo, and later a drum kit.
“It was my dad who gave us the gift of music.
“With this freedom, we developed ourselves and did what we wanted with our lives,” he said.
Source: The Star
One of the saddest facts of John Lennon’s senseless murder in December 1980—and there are many, to be sure—is that his killer robbed him of the opportunity to grow old, to rethink his relationships and perspectives as we all inevitably do with the passage of time.
Yesterday marks the 41st anniversary of John and Paul’s last day together—the last day, at least, for which we have convincing historical evidence in the post-Beatles biographical record.
It was Saturday, April 24, 1976, when Paul and Linda McCartney were visiting John Lennon and Yoko Ono at the Dakota apartment building in New York City. It was a far cry from July 7, 1957—just shy of 19 years earlier—when John and Paul first met in a Liverpool churchyard.
As it turned out, that fateful evening in April 1976 was not the first time that Lennon and McCartney had crossed paths since the Beatles’ disbandment. The songwriting duo had previously reunited on March 29, 1974, during Lennon’s infamous Lost Weekend in Los Angeles. The last known photo of John and Paul was taken that day by May Pang at Lennon’s rented house in Santa Monica.
During the previous evening, the former bandmates had participated in an impromptu jam session with the likes of Stevie Wonder, Harry Nilsson, Jesse Ed Davis, and Bobby Keys in tow. Even Mal Evans, the Beatles’ longtime roadie, was there for the occasion. While the session made for a generally lackluster performance—rendered even worse, no doubt, by a range of licit and illicit substances—the surviving recording was later memorialized on the bootleg LP A Toot and a Snore in ’74.
By: Ken Womack
Source: The Huffington Post
A modern take on meals with a classic rockstar.
Ringo Starr is offering two lucky fans the chance to dine with music royalty as a part of his charity campaign with Omaze.
The Beatles alumni will play host to one charitable fan (and their plus-one) at his 77th birthday brunch on the July 7 in LA. All you have to do is donate a minimum of $10 to Ringo’s Omaze campaign.
All the money goes to benefit the David Lynch Foundation, a non-profit organisation that reduces trauma and toxic stress among at-risk populations, reports Rolling Stone.
Winners will be flown to the event, where they’ll become part of Starr’s inner-circle to dine in style with other VIP guests in front of the world-renowned Capitol Records building.
As is tradition, Starr is encouraging the world to take midday (local time) on July 7 to spread a little “peace and love”. He says, “Wherever you are: on the bus, in the factory, having dinner, having lunch. No matter what part of the world you’re in.”
Recently, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were found to be in the studio together. Starr shared a photo of the two Beatles legends together and wrote: “Thanks for coming over and playing Great bass. I love you man peace and love.”
By: Will Butler
Source: NME
