There’s no way of accurately describing the kind of relationship that John Lennon and Paul McCartney had throughout The Beatles. Every great partnership in music has descended from what they did, and when looking at the broad scope of music, they deserve a spot next to people like Gilbert and Sullivan for the melodies they […]
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Skepticism filled the room before a single note was played. On September 4, 1962, inside the controlled calm of Abbey Road Studios, expectations were carefully guarded. George Martin had seen talented musicians come and go, and the arrival of a new drummer was not something he treated lightly. This was not a rehearsal. It was […]
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It is difficult to imagine it now, in the age of music streaming, when we all have virtually every song ever recorded at our beck and call, but for over 40 years, the prevailing method of music consumption in the United Kingdom was Top of the Pops – at its prime, this televisual cultural institution […]
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On August 20th, 1969, the four members of The Beatles gathered in Studio 2 of Abbey Road with producer George Martin. They were putting the finishing touches to a song as they often did, overdubbing harmonised backing vocals and instrumental takes the same way they’d done since their early singles. At the time, though some […]
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From day one, The Beatles never intended to be the best band in the world. While they probably had their eyes set on being big enough to rival their idols like Elvis Presley and Little Richard, none of the Fab Four could have predicted their music being revered as one of the most perfect bodies […]
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March 8, 1975. Inside Abbey Road Studios, a door closed softly and the room settled into a listening silence. History has a way of arriving without announcement, and this was one of those moments. Paul McCartney made an offer few artists would ever hear, let alone decline. The promise was extraordinary: a song with the […]
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Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder’s place in the pantheon of music greats is as good as confirmed. In fact, not only is it confirmed, but they are likely the leaders of whatever hall of fame they find themselves in, for together they represent the very best of music history. Yet somehow, despite their perceived bulletproof […]
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March 1964 arrived with the force of cultural change. America was listening, watching, and deciding what would last. On live television, before nearly thirty million viewers, Frank Sinatra stood on the stage of The Hollywood Palace and dismissed a rising sound from across the Atlantic. He spoke of noise, of a fad, of something loud […]
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For all John Lennon’s painfully authentic realisations of his deepest emotions and sentiments in song, he probably never wrote anything quite as tragic as Paul McCartney’s meditation on loneliness: ‘Eleanor Rigby’. The Beatles released the track as a single alongside the far happier ‘Yellow Submarine’, and the two of them became one of the strangest […]
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It might be assumed that if any one person completely and utterly understood The Beatles, it must surely have been George Martin, but even he was just as lost as everyone else in moments. Martin was uniquely placed to understand it all, though, and he might not have been there from the very start in […]
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