By summer 1966, The Beatles were a spent force. Beatlemania’s dizzying whirlwind had fatigued the band; a bad cloud hung in the air of their Japanese, Philippines, and US Bible Belt dates in light of royal snubs and ‘Bigger than Jesus’ quips, and the Fab Four’s growing creative ambitions were outrunning their basic live set-up. […]
Continue Reading
Most of The Beatles’ greatest songs have been held up as untouchable in the rock field. For every pop marvel like ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ or ‘Hey Jude’, there are more experimental tracks like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ that saw them pushing the boundaries for what rock and roll could […]
Continue Reading
Some moments in music are planned down to the smallest detail. Others arrive without warning, shaped not by intention but by timing. What happened when Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and Willie Nelson found themselves in the same room belonged entirely to the second kind. There was no announcement, no concept, no agenda. Just three musicians, […]
Continue Reading
Hollywood Bowl, August 15, 1965. The sun slipped behind the white arches as evening settled into anticipation. More than 18,000 voices filled the air, waiting for The Beatles to begin. Soundcheck was underway, routine and focused, until it stopped without warning. Instruments fell silent. Conversations dissolved. Something unexpected had entered the space. From the wings, […]
Continue Reading
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 […]
Continue Reading
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 […]
Continue Reading
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 […]
Continue Reading
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 […]
Continue Reading
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 […]
Continue Reading
January 30, 1969, arrived cold and unremarkable in central London, until music rose where it was never meant to. Atop 3 Savile Row, The Beatles stepped into the open air and began to play, unaware that they were about to create one of the most scrutinized moments in modern cultural memory. Below them, the city […]
Continue Reading