All the rules fell by the wayside by the time Led Zeppelin recorded ‘Stairway to Heaven’, as the band began exploring new forms of music that were different and more European than the harder-edged blues anthems on their first two albums. It wasn’t just Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, either, as keyboardist John Paul Jones […]
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It turns out that the small Weybridge town in the UK’s Surrey area possibly lent an indirect hand in shaping one of The Beatles’ most creative cuts on more than one occasion. By 1967, The Beatles were well into their psychedelic phase, eagerly trying to capture the mind-expanding experiences had on LSD to record as […]
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The evening did not carry the restless energy of a typical concert. It unfolded slowly, almost reverently, as though the room itself understood the weight of what was about to happen. Julian Lennon, Sean Lennon, Dhani Harrison, Zak Starkey, and James McCartney stepped forward together, not as replacements for giants, but as custodians of something […]
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The Beatles were never meant to survive as a touring act for the rest of their lives. Even if they were happy to play to thousands of screaming fans every night, it probably wasn’t the best feeling in the world knowing that they could hardly hear themselves and that their audience was overpowering the music. […]
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Inspiration can come from anywhere, but it’s much more likely to hit when things are looking up, such that the world feels like it might turn forever, and it’s something George Harrison knew better than anyone else. Another truism about inspiration is that it can, eventually, dry up. Not always, of course, for there are […]
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Both John Lennon and George Harrison belonged to a musical generation that shared a near-universal teen soundtrack, centred on rock ‘n’ roll’s seismic lightning bolt from across the Atlantic. There was wiggle room, sure. Eric Clapton was more tethered to the old blues tradition, while Graham Bond was fundamentally shaped by jazz’s fluid rhythms, but […]
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By the end of his time with The Beatles, George Harrison had started to grow restless. The official story pins the songwriter as one of the hit-making machine’s most frustrated cogs. While Paul McCartney and John Lennon continued to dominate the Liverpudlian group’s recording sessions, Harrison grew increasingly disillusioned with his place in the band. […]
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We can all picture it, the glorious moustaches proudly stradling the top lips of The Beatles on the cover for their iconic album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. As it happens, the band were so enamoured with their hairy lips that they even included cardboard cut-outs of their newly spouted muff-dusters with copies the […]
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For all of the acclaim that The Beatles received throughout their career, George Harrison always seemed to be above it all. As much as he loved the idea of being one of the best guitarists of his generation, there was more to life than money and acclaim every single time that the Fab Four got […]
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What’s the wildest rock and roll injury story you can remember? Bob Dylan crashing his motorbike, Patti Smith breaking her neck onstage in 1977, Pete Townshend impaling his hand on his whammy bar during The Who’s reunion tour in 1989 (which they obviously should have called their re-Whonion tour) or the time that Keith Richards […]
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