As the hippie era dawned in the mid-1960s, the world became aware of the mind-exploding benefits of the hallucinogenic drug. The Beatles were introduced to the wonders of LSD, courtesy of London dentist John Riley, halfway through the decade and, whether they liked it or not, became the narcotic’s poster boys for the mainstream. While […]
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For a long time, it was hard for Beatles fans to look back on Let It Be without a little bit of a sour taste in their mouths. The band were fracturing as far as everyone could tell, and seeing them stitch together the remnants of an album as their swansong made it look like […]
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There is a myth that goes around that Ringo Starr wasn’t a great drummer, and that is no small tragedy. The true cost of this falsehood is that it perpetuates a massive fallacy about the art of drumming in general. This malignant misunderstanding has underpinned a great deal of sticksmith folly in subsequent generations, as […]
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While Liverpool holds a totemic presence in Fab Four lore, Los Angeles glows with an Emerald City allure during the peaks of Beatlemania. Naturally, it’s their hometown’s suburban features and streets that form essential alleys and landmarks among the John Lennon and Paul McCartney songbook. The Strawberry Field Salvation Army’s surrealist retreat, ‘Penny Lane’s kaleidoscopic […]
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No compilation of Jimmy Page’s best work, whether created by a record label or a fan on a streaming app, is going to front-load his 1980s material. After the death of John Bonham brought an end to Led Zeppelin at the start of the decade, Page was slightly adrift for a while; there were moments […]
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When breaking America, a lot of artists will want to start as they mean to go on. Except, if the first time Queen went Stateside was anything to go by, they would have always been destined to fail. Picture the scene: the year was 1974, and although the success of Queen and Queen II was […]
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As far as business deals go, passing up on the opportunity to sign one of the most successful, beloved bands in history is the kind of nightmare that keeps music industry executives up at night. Yet, during the early 1960s, multiple record labels turned The Beatles away from their roster, with one infamously noting that […]
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When the 1960s gave way to the 1970s, rock and roll largely carried on its course. The music grew heavier and new subcultures emerged, but it was more evolution than revolution. The shift from the 1970s to the 1980s, however, was a different story. Suddenly, many rock stars were experimenting with questionable new directions, and […]
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There’s a certain magic that came whenever The Beatles that wasn’t lost on Paul McCartney. He may have been the one who wrote all of those classic songs with John Lennon at the start of their career, but if it wasn’t for all of them finding their place in every single one of their tunes, […]
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All of The Beatles were usually more than happy to give some of their songs to Ringo Starr. The drummer wasn’t known to be the most ambitious songwriter that the world had ever seen, and since he only managed to crank out two and a half songs when he was with the group, it was […]
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