Part of the appeal of any great rock and roll band is knowing when to play and when not to. Although it might be fun to hog the spotlight and go out front and shred the perfect solo, it’s useless to try to wow a crowd when only a handful of notes will suffice. And […]
The Beatles, known affectionately as the Fab Four, have always had John Lennon and Paul McCartney as the beating core of the group. That’s not to diminish the work of George Harrison or Ringo Starr, but merely to highlight the impressive talent held between the songwriting partnership. The duo began their career being able to […]
The Beatles’ sound is so intrinsically linked with pop music it can be easy to forget that they were capable of turning it up to eleven if they needed to. While songs like ‘Helter Skelter’ and ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ are full of guts, nothing rang the rock and roll bell just like ‘Revolution’, a […]
When they were in The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were massively successful. According to Harrison, though, they didn’t walk away from the band with as much money as they should have. He said that their company, Apple Corps, employed too many “gangsters.” George Harrison said The Beatles lost millions […]
If you liked bands with multiple lead guitar players, The Beatles certainly fit the bill in the 1960s. On records as early as A Hard Day’s Night (’64), you can hear John Lennon taking the solo on “You Can’t Do That.” The following year, fans of the Fab Four heard Paul McCartney out in front […]
Do you judge your favorite actors and films by how many Oscars they win? No, no one does, but it’s nice to be recognized. For some reason, the Academy frequently does a poor job of awarding some deserving artists every year. The same goes for every awards show, and it’s not hard to figure out […]
If you were an American fan of The Beatles in the ’60s, you had to feel like you were getting the short end of the stick. Take the U.S. release of Rubber Soul (1965). When Americans opened their copies of the new Fab album, they found “Nowhere Man,” “If I Needed Someone,” and “Drive My […]
If you go by creative output, The Beatles’ 1968 trip to India was a huge success. During their stay in Rishikesh studying transcendental meditation under the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the members of the world’s most famous band wrote about 30 songs. The Fab Four recorded most of them for The White Album, and fans know […]
Given all the instruments, microphones, and other moving parts used in studios, it’s obvious why recordings don’t come out flawlessly. And The Beatles had plenty of blemishes and other unintended accidents turn up on their albums. Sometimes, the band was happy to leave in the mistake. A famous example came in the recording of “Ob-La-Di, […]
If you were a fan of The Beatles, news of the band’s breakup hit hard in April 1970. And that news arrived just ahead of the first solo album by Paul McCartney. In a question-and-answer insert included with reviewer copies, McCartney revealed that the Fab Four had parted ways. The Daily Mirror blasted out the […]