Beatles News
How John Lennon's "creative accident" became one of rock 'n' roll's greatest innovations.
The Beatles’ unprecedented sonic experimentation on their 1966 album Revolver make it one rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest albums. But ironically, one of the album’s greatest innovations happened on a B-side that came out before the final album.
Backward guitar and sitar solos appear throughout Revolver, which is credited as the first popularized use of “backmasking”, the intentional recording of a track in reverse. But songs like “Love You To” and “Tomorrow Never Knows” were not the first songs the band recorded backward.
The day the Woodstock festival opened was an epoch-defining moment in pop. Yet an even more extraordinary event was taking place less than 100 miles away on Friday, 15 August, 1969.
In a journey every bit as unlikely as that of the tin can that had taken men to the Moon less than a month earlier, Bob Dylan and his family were boarding the QE2 in New York to sail to a little island off the south coast of England, snubbing the festival that had been set up in Dylan’s backyard in order to tempt him out of three years’ retirement. In one of the greatest coups, naïve but earnest youngsters were unwittingly stealing the planet’s biggest rock star from the most famous festival in rock history.
Deep Beatles’ look at the Decca audition concludes with another early John Lennon/Paul McCartney original, “Love of the Loved.” Primarily a McCartney composition, “Love of the Loved” features a slight Latin rhythm and a vocal performance that demonstrates the singer had worked on refining his range and phrasing. The Beatles never officially released the song, although it was later covered by a fellow Liverpudlian.
According to Mark Lewisohn’s Tune In, McCartney first penned the track in 1959 while walking home, either from a date or John Lennon’s house. His then-girlfriend Dot Rhone later claimed he had written the lyrics with her in mind, but Paul McCartney never publicly commented on this assertion.
Famous Beatles venue to go back to its beginnings with vinyl shop and coffee bar.
Iconic Liverpool venue The Jacaranda is to go back to its roots with a new coffee shop and vinyl record emporium on its first floor.
The historic Liverpool bar reopened its doors back in November.
Now the team are planning a vinyl store and cafe above the famous bar.
It will feature self-contained booths with a vinyl deck set in the table where music fans can listen to their favourite discs whilst they have a coffee.
Ahead of Macca's gig at the Echo Arena we highlight some of the smaller city centre venues that hosted the Fab Four.
This week sees a welcome return to his hometown for Sir Paul McCartney.
The Beatles legend will be bringing his Out There tour to Liverpool on Thursday.
He’ll be playing at the ECHO arena, on the site of the old King’s Dock, where he performed another triumphant Liverpool show back in 2003.
As he takes to the stage in front of 11,000 fans, Paul might pause to reflect he's come a long way from the tiny city centre clubs frequented by the Beatles in the early 1960s.
Penned during 'Revolver' sessions, letter reveals that The Beatles pulled out of planned Stax sessions due to financial issues
A previously unreleased letter that George Harrison wrote to Atlanta DJ Paul Drew in May of 1966 reveals that the Beatles seriously contemplated recording at Stax in Memphis with producer Jim Stewart before the plan was derailed by financial issues. "We would all like it a lot," Harrison wrote by hand, "but too many people get insane with money ideas at the mention of the word 'Beatles,' and so it fell through!"
WORLD EXCLUSIVE Hundreds of previously unseen Beatles photos have been found after languishing in boxes for 50 years alongside forgotten images of other famous names from the 1960s.
The Beatles photos, captured during a shoot at Granada Studios in December 1965, are among around half a million newly discovered images from the worlds of music, sport and entertainment captured by photographers for TV Times magazine.
Only a tiny fraction were published before they were stashed in A4 envelopes inside boxes at the British Film Institute (BFI) in London – and apparently forgotten about ever since.
It seems as though musicians are being busted for copyright infringement a lot more frequently. ‘Blurred lines’ sounds like ‘Got to give it up’, ‘Stay with me’ is a knock-off of ‘I won’t back down’, and ‘Down Under’ rips off ‘Kookaburra’. When did artists become so litigious? Actually, it’s been going on forever.
In many cases of musical misappropriation, artists themselves are remarkably cool about ‘their’ music being used by someone else. Tom Petty was extremely gracious to Sam Smith about the similarities between ‘Stay with me’ and ‘I won’t back down’, saying in a blog post “I have never had any hard feelings toward Sam”
The Astrid Kirchherr Early Beatles Collection of photographs – available exclusively at Rock Paper Photo - is one of the most important photographic records of a time in 20th century popular culture that was quite simply magical. Rock Paper Photo is the birth of a cataclysmic youth movement as personified by a group of young men from the north of Engalnd was witnessed via the camera of a style-innovating young German woman who befriended and influenced them. All of them were in the right place, at the right time, to make history together. Astrid Kirchherr’s lens caught the members of the Beatles as they transitioned from unknown teenagers to famous rock stars, from innocent to wise, from youths to men. These photographs remain as witnesses to this era, and viewers of the collection are privileged to experience them.
Sir Paul McCartney's daughter talks about her family and the inspiration behind her new vegetarian cookbook At My Table.
In her light-filled studio tucked away down a cobbled mews in an unglamorous corner of northwest London, Mary McCartney is juggling the day’s engagements and talking about her books.
On the table in front of us are the hefty volumes of Monochrome/Colour. Published last year, they gather together images taken by the photographer over the past 20-odd years. There are street scenes, still-lifes, celebrity portraits (actress Gwyneth Paltrow, musician Beth Ditto) and intimate pictures of family members. Here’s musician father Sir Paul and his wife Nancy Shevell, fuzzily caught embracing in his London garden at the reception after their 2011 wedding. There’s fashion designer sister Stella, shot in warm close-up. There’s her late mother Linda, snapped on Polaroid.
