Beatles News
Shots of The Beatles’ first US concerts are expected to sell for £250,000 ($347,000) at auction. Mike Mitchell, 18 at the time, snapped hundreds of never-before-seen photographs of the band’s performances at the Washington Coliseum and the Baltimore Civic Centre in 1964. The negatives, taken only with ambient light as Mitchell had no flash, have sat for decades in his basement.
Source: The Guardian
The day after The Beatles’ Cardiff show, manager Brian Epstein and the bandmates met with Walter Shenson, the producer who brought them to the big screen in A Hard Day’s Night and Help!
While the meeting was certainly less climactic than the previous evening’s concert, the day’s events held great portents nonetheless. Brian had arranged the meeting so that Walter could pitch a third feature film to the group. This time, the deal involved another property for United Artists titled A Talent for Loving.
Based on Richard Condon’s novel of the same name, A Talent for Loving would depict the four lads from Liverpool transplanted into an 1870s-era western as pioneering frontiersmen. But for the first time, the Beatles weren’t having it, voting unanimously – all for one and one for all, as was their practice – to reject Shenson’s gambit outright.
Source: Ken Womack/independent.co.uk
You might only know the Beatles as John, Paul, George and Ringo, but before there was a Starr, there was a Best. Often called the fifth Beatle, Pete Best was a member of the Fab Four just when Beatlemania was becoming a thing between 1960 and 1962.
Once the band -- with the help of manager Brian Epstein -- decided to replace Best with Starr, Beatles fans were outraged, chanting, "Pete forever, Ringo never!" And in their defense, Best is definitely still the best-looking out of the mop-top crew.
So, what's he up to now? On March 30-31, he and his brother Roag Best will be performing, answering questions and signing autographs at Queen Bee's (3925 Ohio Street) for the San Diego Beatles Fair.
Source: By Rutger Rosenborg/nbcsandiego.com
The Liverpudlian who put the Beatles in suits, landed them a record deal with Parlophone, and brought to them to “The Ed Sullivan Show” is getting the biopic treatment from Bravo. Bravo is developing a limited series based on the life of Brian Epstein, the Beatles manager who helped steer them to “the toppermost of the poppermost” from the early 1960s until his death of a drug overdose in August 1967 at the age of 32.
Produced by Universal Cable Productions and Sonar Entertainment, the project is based on “The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story,” the Dark Horse Comics graphic novel penned by Vivek J. Tiwary with art by Andrew C. Robinson and Kyle Baker. Tiwary will pen the series adaptation and serve as executive producer along with Leopoldo Gout. Bravo said the project has secured access to the Lennon-McCartney song catalog for use in the series.
Epstein is an enigmatic figure in the history of the legendary band. He struggled with internal and external demons and discrimination as a Jewish, closeted gay man living at a time when homosexuality was a felony in Britain.
Source: By Cynthia Littleton /Variety
On display in a museum in Liverpool is a tiny record that changed the history of music.
Made in 1962, it holds a recording of "Hello Little Girl" by a then-unknown band called "John Lennon and the Beatles".
The Fab Four were struggling to get a record deal when their manager took this record to a meeting with George Martin, the man who would become known as "the fifth Beatle".
He saw the potential in the music group that day - and the rest is history.
This is the amazing story of the record that started it all:
Source: ITV Report
George Harrison is today best remembered as the spiritual Beatle, but when he wrote "Blue Jay Way,” he was still helping invent rock star protocol. The Beatles already formed rock music from the Cavern they were carved in, and Harrison lived the lifestyle to its fullest. He was single the longest, married a model – perennial musical muse Pattie Boyd, rented rich people’s houses in the Hollywood Hills and went slumming in Haight-Ashbury. He was the youngest Beatle, born on Feb. 25, 1943. For what would have been Harrison’s 75th birthday, the band’s official Vevo YouTube site dropped the music video for “Blue Jay Way.” The clip is an excerpt of The Beatles' 1967 television film Magical Mystery Tour.
Source: denofgeek.com
A motorcycle once owned by Beatles legend John Lennon has fetched a record-breaking £57,500 at auction.
The 1969 Honda Z50A Monkey Bike sold for almost double the estimated £30,000 when it went under the hammer at the National Motorcycle Museum in Solihull.
Lennon used the bike to get around his Tittenhurst Park estate in Berkshire, where he lived from 1969 to 1971.
It was sold by John Harington, who had owned it for 47 years and displayed it at various shows.
He bought the bike from Henry Graham, of Hook, Hampshire, who said he had bought the motorbike from Lennon when he was living at Tittenhurst Park.
The successful bid on Sunday is the highest price ever paid at a public auction for a Honda Monkey Bike.
Source: BBC News
The Beatles members forewent a journey of fame and fortune during their lives, but not without a struggle.
Visiting Scholar Walter Everett, Professor of Music Theory from the University of Michigan, gave a presentation March 6 about unfolding the psychology and success of the fab-four. Katie Kapurch, assistant professor of English, invited Everett to speak at Texas State. She met Everett at a Beatles conference at Penn State in 2014. She said after he read one of her publications, they decided to collaborate because they shared similar interests related to the representation of sex, sexuality and gender in pop culture.
Kapurch said they have contracted with Bloomsbury for a book with the working title, “Sex and Gender in Rock and Pop from the Beatles to Beyoncé”. The free co-sponsored event featured a presentation that delved into the composition of the 1967 single “Strawberry Fields Forever”. Everett has published an acclaimed two-volume book “The Beatles as Musicians” and stands at the forefront of scholarly research on The Beatles.
Source: Diana Furman/star.txstate.edu
The Beatles were arguably one of the greatest and most talented rock groups of all time. Consisting of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, this unassuming quartet arguably changed the face of popular music completely thanks to the music they crafted during their nine-year stint.
But have you ever wondered how far the apple fell from the tree? With Ringo’s son, Zak Starkey, hitting up Melbourne for a couple of shows with his band SSHH this weekend, we’ve decided to take a look at the musical careers undertaken by the offspring of one of music’s greatest groups.
Source: Tyler Jenke/tonedeaf.com.au
As hairdresser to the Beatles in the 1960s, Leslie Cavendish was exposed to sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. However, working for Vidal Sassoon, the most famous hairdresser of the time, he was under strict instructions that the female clientele – including Jane Asher, Mary Quant and singer Shirley Bassey – were off limits. And drugs didn’t float his boat. But rock n’ roll and the Beatles were a dream come true.
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In his recently-published book, The Cutting Edge: The Story of the Beatles’ Hairdresser Who Defined An Era, Cavendish (who is pictured below, strumming the Gretsch guitar John Lennon used during the recording of Paperback Writer), lifts the lid not just on Beatlemania, but also on popular culture in an era when the BBC only played “safe and proper” music by artists speaking “the Queen’s equerry”.
Source: By Alex Galbinski/jewishnews.timesofisrael.com
